As a fantasy author, I can’t help but wonder how writing has significantly influenced my life over the years. Not only has it shaped my perception of the world around me, but it also has defined my character and personality in ways that nothing else could. For, you see, writing is not just a career path I chose one day in hopes of making it big in the publishing world. It was a calling, a preordination I felt I was meant to fulfill given how my life has gone thus far.

It all began when I was a little kid learning to cope with some pretty severe mental health conditions I didn’t know I had at the time. Oftentimes, my condition would produce behaviors in me that would cause my peers in school to bully me, resulting in some traumatic experiences that negatively affected my emotional well-being. The only thing that gave me a sense of stability amid the chaos I was experiencing was my ability to create stories where I played the role of the hero fighting to save the world from the villains that, more often than not, symbolized my bullies, thus giving me a sense of control over my situation. This practice was a therapeutic experience for me, allowing for some sense of stability in a world that made no sense to me then.

As I grew older, my playtime as a storyteller evolved into a fascination with the art of creative writing, and I began reading epic fantasy novels such as Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. Novels that offered me an escape from the hells of puberty that I was experiencing at the time as I journeyed into worlds of wonder that were the result of another person’s imagination. The more I read such works of fiction, the more I began to try my hand at such an endeavor as I attempted to craft my own fantasy world that was as magical and exciting as Narnia and Middle Earth. Over time, as I took classes and read books on the art of fiction writing, I slowly began to develop such a world that would serve as the setting of an epic fantasy series I knew had the potential to inspire readers with its message surrounding the true meaning of life.

There is much I could say about my writing that I will leave to future blog posts for the sake of brevity here. For now, it suffices me to say that writing has played a significant role in my personal and professional life, and it will likely continue to do so for as long as I am alive. For, you see, I felt that there was a reason I had to experience the hardships of mental illness and bullying as a kid. God doesn’t let us go through harrowing experiences without there being a lesson or a blessing on the other side of it all. I strongly feel that God wanted me to know what it was like to feel absolutely worthless so that I would be inspired to write my stories to help others who are feeling sad or depressed come to the knowledge of their divine worth as children of a loving Father in Heaven. Great art, after all, is born from the ashes of trauma, and my own writing journey is no exception.