I am like an athlete that has neglected her craft, a sprinter who only runs when forced to for competitions sake. A soccer player who, between games, keeps her soccer ball locked up in a dark, damp basement. I am using muscles that are in pain because I didn’t stretch before the game. This is how it feels when I try to write for fun.

I remember when words came as naturally as the seasons. They were messy and misspelled, but faithful nonetheless.

Today, I found myself in a room full of writers, sipping black coffee and discussing how we were all going to write and publish a book by the end of the semester. While sitting in that room that I realized I am both in love with and afraid of stories.

I remember the first time I saw my byline in a newspaper. I was sixteen and it had just been published in The Indianapolis Star through Y-press, a youth media organization. Granted, I wrote this story with a team of 5 other high school students and the final printed version looked nothing like what we had actually written. But my name was on the page nonetheless. I felt accomplished. This was one of the things that helped me fall in love with creating stories (In addition to reading books, but possibly more on that later).

I also remember having a blog. This blog was my attempt to be honest and talk about my life. I wanted to be truthful. This is the world through my eyes, this is what happened, this is my story.

The messy thing about our stories is that they involve other people sometimes (Unless you live as hermits live. Hermit life seems appealing at time to an introvert such as myself, but I know I am made for bigger and better things. I want to make a difference in the world, that’s all.) Someone got offend over something that I had written about them in my story about me. And even though I tried to explain that this was really how I felt from my perspective, it was a mess. I realized that words are dangerous tools that can be used to hurt of heal, and you had to be careful with them.

Going into this project, I know that we are going to write about ourselves. And we are also going to write about the people we have come across in life who made us who we are. We will speak about fears, dreams and failures. We will talk about the time we made a stupid decision or the time we hurt someone we cared about or the time we were hurt and the times we were healed. We will wonder if we really want our parents, teachers, pastors, or friends reading our stories, but we will tell it anyways because as journalist, writers and people we know that to have the truth and not share it is a great crime.

I still believe the most important factor in writing is bravery. The next more important factor is honesty. And I hope to accompany both.