Writing Challenge: Writerly Reflections

We blog for a million different reasons, but in the end, we’re all storytellers. Creative Writing Challenges are here to help you push your writing boundaries and explore new ideas, subjects, and writing styles.

To participate, tag your post with DPchallenge and include a link to this post, to generate a pingback and help others find the challenges. Please make sure your post has been specifically written in response to this challenge. We might just highlight some of our favorites on Freshly Pressed on Friday, and in our quarterly newsletter.

In comic books, an origin story reveals how the superhero(ine) acquired their superpowers. For us as bloggers, writing is one of our superpowers. We know that writing has the power to change the world. Case in point: the recent 2014 Canada Reads debates pitted five books against one another to decide the book with the power to change Canada for the better. (I’m a Canadian book nerd. Sorry!)

Last Friday, photographer Ben gave us a great photo challenge in Reflections. In today’s challenge, you’ll reflect on your origin story and tell us how and why you became a writer.

O Mighty Isis! Or, Superpowers, activate!

The Atom Picofig by Julian Fong (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Did your love of books start with uncontrollable laughter, begging your mom to read Green Eggs and Ham for the 50th time? Did you want to follow Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy through that wardrobe in The Chronicles of Narnia? Did you wish you could be Meg in A Wrinkle in Time? Those are just some of the books I loved as a kid. I wanted to be able to create my own world in which to escape. Suess, Lewis, and L’Engle were my heroes. I wanted to write amazing books, just like they did. I still do.

Think back: what was the first story or poem you wrote because you wanted to? How old were you? Did you, like me, start writing in “blem,” crooked-edge notepads your printer dad brought home from work because they couldn’t be shipped to the customer?

These are some of the elements of my origin story as a writer. And now, over to you.

It’s your turn

In this challenge, tell us how you fell in love with books and writing. Not sure how to get started? Here are some questions to gently nudge your memory and your muse:

Which books did you love growing up? Which poems?
Do you remember your first original composition? What was it? How did you feel while writing it?
Did you secret your writing away or share it with family and friends?
What sort of writing do you enjoy doing best? Fiction? Nonfiction? Creative Nonfiction? Poetry? Memoir? Other?
What are your writerly aspirations? Do you write for yourself, or to become published?
Why do you write?
What keeps you writing?
Do you have a daily writing practice? Tell us about it.

You’re welcome to simply answer the questions. Bonus points for weaving your facts into a narrative.

I can’t wait to read your story.