Tales from Burkeland: Tale Eight
Author’s Note: This Tales from Burkeland began as an essay for a creative writing class in college. Our professor asked us to explore why we write. I remembered the piece after an Instagram follower asked the same question during a recent get-to-know-you series. I dug through my many external hard drives until I found it, revised it (heavily), and now, here it is. Enjoy!
The words chose me. They called to me from the pages of the books I have disappeared into for longer than my memory stretches, and they continue to call to me. I have always loved words.
Before I knew how to write, those books helped me learn about the world, especially the parts of being alive that are hard to describe in any way but story. Once I learned to write, the words found a new way to move through me, leading me to deeper understanding.
Around age eleven, I turned an argument with my mom and brother into an elaborate game of backyard make-believe. I became a teenage rebel, fleeing my family and joining the resistance. A clump of pine trees became our hideout. The dirt under the deck became a sewer I crawled through, fleeing after an attack on my brother’s forces. Eventually, Mom’s voice cut into the world I’d built, beckoning me for dinner. Sweaty and dirty, I trudged inside. After dinner, I returned to my world, this time from behind a keyboard. Using elementary school vocabulary, I wrote the story I’d acted out hours before and saved it to a floppy disc. I have been a writer ever since.
As the years passed, I filled a dresser drawer to the brim with stories, poems, and journals. When I read them now, I’m reminded of who I used to be. The kid making sense of family squabbles by turning them into epic battles. The preteen figuring out friendship and boy drama through tales of witchcraft and love potions. The young writer struggling to capture the turmoil of teenage emotion through (bad) poetry. And beside the creative works, journals where I recorded the events, thoughts, and feelings that sparked the stories. And I see the similarities to the books and movies from that time and the ways other people’s stories fed my brain elements to help me make sense of life. Writing and consuming stories are, after all, inextricably linked.
Although the quality has improved (thank goodness!), my writing now isn’t so different from the words on those wrinkled, browned pages. I still gravitate toward magic, epic battles, and family dynamics. I still use story to make sense of the world. Writing remains my way of understanding.
When I share my writing—whether it be fiction or nonfiction—it’s to help others better understand themselves and our world, too. But, perhaps more importantly, I share my writing so the words can connect to my readers the way they did—and do—to me. There’s a magic in stories and words that weaves threads of connection, both within the minds of individuals and between people, countries, and cultures.
There’s power in stories. There’s power in words. They call to us, and we answer, wielding them to shape thoughts and actions. It’s my privilege to be someone the words chose to capture some of their magic.
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What you missed in this month’s newsletter:
From the Drafts — Quotes Without Context from “The Dragon, the Dog, and the Mountain Man”
Remember You Shine — Ikigai: What Gives Your Life Value?
Myths and Magic — Dragons
From My Shelf — My Favorite Stories from Writers of the Future Vol. 41