I wrote my first book at 12 years old— yep, 12 years old. On paper, that sounds quite impressive. It’s not an easy feat to write 130,00 words and yet that’s not how I see it.
You see, while I managed to write a lot, my writing was by no means anything special. And by “anything special”, I mean at all half-decent. It took some time for me to accept it, but my writing was just plain bad. Not misunderstood or a little messy or anything of that sort. Just bad.
When I did come to terms with this revelation though, I was surprisingly unaffected by it. It mattered very little to me that my plot lacked structure, that my characters lacked depth, that my prose was elementary. My undeveloped skill did not diminish my love for the craft.
So, I kept writing.
I started new projects— short stories, novellas, stage plays, manuscripts— and I studied each one after I finished it, hunting their flaws and finding innovative ways to avoid those mistakes in my later works. For four years, I constantly wrote and revise simply because I enjoyed it (which I consider one of the most pointless reasons for doing anything). As I became painfully aware of by reading my old works, four years can make a lot of progress.
Still, I am not perfect. My writing is not perfect. I have written for so long and, yet, I still revise because writing is not a skill that can be mastered. It’s ever-change, ever-growing, and, above all else, chronically human.
Perhaps that’s the reason I enjoy it to begin with.
Author’s Note:
I wrote this piece to debut on my blog as reflection of my current writing career.
Ginger Hester | 15 | South Carolina, USA | @gingerlywriting on Substack, @gingerly.writer on TikTok, @lostinafieldofflowers on YouTube
