Published by: Jahzara Jera P San Miguel
Date Published: June 3 2022
Time Published: 11:36am
Classification: Prose
Theme: Autobiography
Synopsis: Since the school year is near ending, I thought I might as well write prose about how my hobby of writing stories began.
...
Hear me out, I'm not exactly sure when I started to make stories or how I managed to get myself to be a writer, but as far as my memory takes me, everything started when I watched a cartoon I loved when I was little (I will not be stating the name of what the cartoon was because this prose will be embarrassing enough as it is, sort of).
My little child mind would make up little scenarios in my head between the characters of that cartoon and other characters from a separate cartoon. I also had my "own" characters, but they would always be a very bad copy of another existing character.
I was easily influenced back then. So, whatever I saw in a cartoon or any show, I would recreate it in the said cartoon. I will spare the details of what exactly were those scenes back then for such reasons including for the sake and permanence of my dignity (half sarcasm).
Putting this into perspective, I would inarguably say that a lot of scenes I picked up back then were not appropriate for my age. I suppose that's how easily influenced I was as a little girl.
But I genuinely enjoyed making scenes back then, and I remember daydreaming about them in my class all the time.
Somewhere when I was in 3rd or 4th grade, I began to write short stories on grade 3 papers. I can't remember what pushed me to do this, but this was the point where I started to want to become a writer when I grow up.
That was a phase, a very quick one.
For whatever reason, I quickly dropped it and switched to wanting to become a psychologist.
Fast forward to 6th grade. One of my closest friends introduced me to anime, and that was the real starting point of how I became a writer. The anime my friend introduced me to was My Hero Academia, a perfect anime for viewers to create their own characters and OCs (original character/s).
The character I created back then was...how do I put this without hurting my twelve-year-old self…
Bland.
This was the very first somewhat original character I've ever created and she was horribly written. Overpowered, dull, unemotional, typical "tragic" backstory, and so on.
But the others characters I've "added" into her story were worse. Apparently, I had learned absolutely nothing from my mistake of taking random characters from other stories and inserting them into my own, and calling them "my" characters.
I was proud of this, mind you. And my twelve-year-old mind had assumed that there was no harm in this because I wasn't an experienced writer.
I am truly very ashamed to admit this, but I suppose a lot of others begin with a bad start.
I did this with roughly about two characters if my memory serves me well. I kept one of them but I've completely changed him into a new character. You might know him.
It's Levi who I've kept, the most used character in my short stories.
Levi is based on Levi Ackerman from Attack on Titan, hence his name. He was the adoptive father of my character in My Hero Academia. His role in my stories has not changed much, but his personality and character certainly did.
Despite him being my favorite, he wasn't completely original, to begin with.
Throughout the pandemic, I began to improve and eventually started my own original book. I didn't write it, rather I just fantasized about it.
After subtle encouragement from my friends, I finally began writing my first book, Captain's Rosy Lass. I began writing it somewhere around early 2021, and one year later, I've written over fifty-one chapters.
If you were to tell me all those years ago that this would be my future, I would have thought that you were blabbering out nonsense.
Though I am not a perfect or professional writer, I'm very thankful and fortunate that I've managed to improve and get this far. My parents are aware that I'm a writer, but they praise me more for my art, something I hardly focus on nowadays.
I love literature. It gives me a sense of comfort and it allows me to express my thoughts, feelings, and ideas. You don't have to be a genius to be able to write a good book. It is perfect for someone with a wide imagination like me.
(Because Levi is my most used character, here is my drawing of his real appearance:)
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