Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time there was a little girl who wanted to be a writer. She loved to put words on paper and read them back to herself when she thought no one was listening. Her daydreams were full of stories about beautiful princesses and handsome knights in shining armor and fire-breathing dragons who were actually good people under wicked spells. The girl would tell these stories to her younger sisters who believed every word she said.

The little girl grew older and although she still had lots of stories in her head, she discovered that her friends and family weren’t as enthusiastic about her writing anymore. They told her to grow up and stop living in a fantasy world. They told her that she was just imagining things that could never happen and that her stories were stupid. So the girl let them think that she’d forgotten about being a writer, and from then on she tried to be what they wanted her to be. She worked very hard at doing what she thought were the right things to do in order to fit in, but she never really felt like she did. Fit in, that is. And for many years she didn’t write anything at all.

Then the girl fell in love with a boy who didn’t care that she was different. As a matter of fact, he loved her more because she was. He believed in her, encouraged her, and pushed her along in her dream to be a writer. It took a long time, because they had children and the girl had to work to make ends meet, and there were so many other things to occupy her time. But eventually, when the girl was a grandmother, she became a writer. It was then that she realized something.

She’d been a writer all along.