Being an only child and a black sheep of the family, with a broken family to boot, I had a lot of time to read. I also had a very creative mind. I like to think that my writing talent started around the fourth grade when my teacher confiscated a book of drawings and turned them into the gifted and talented teacher; Doctor Bear. She had me tested which got me into the gifted and talented program in elementary school. I credit Doctor Bear with being the person that jump started my writing to the level it is at today.

She has a doctorate in childhood development and education with an emphasis on gifted and talented education. If you couldn’t tell; my strength is my creativity and my weakness is writing. That remains true to this day. She took one my drawings and told me to write about it. I wrote a page about it, to which she told me it was a good description but she wanted a story. She had me write more. Each time she told me she wanted more detail and more emotion. She wanted to be immersed in the drawing, to live the story. I still hear her giving me advice when I write. I eventually ended up producing a very early prototype of one of the ascendant stories from it.

While this is how the other world was produced and created, it turns out I was wrong about the writing bit. Recently, my mother produced a book that I wrote and illustrated when I was 3. Most of the words are really hard to read and look like something a 3 year old would write but there are words and there is a story. I did not know that “if I don’t write, i will go insane” actually ran that deep in my brain. I wonder how many of those works I did as a child that I threw out or lost.

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