Writing, for me, has always been associated with tutus and ducks.

Allow me to explain. The very first original piece of literature I can recall crayoning was a short story about an adventurous yellow duck by the name of Toto, which I pronounced like tutu. I think it was a school assignment. Our kindergarten or first grade teacher told us we had to write and draw a few small pages so we could staple them together and make a little booklet. Most kids wrote about their dads, or Purim, or the Power Rangers, but I decided to make up a story about a duck. I don’t remember exactly what Toto did in his first misadventure, but I know it was the first of many. For years I would continue to make up more stories about the duck.

I once created a Toto the Duck Christmas special, I can actually recollect the general premise of that story. In it, Toto faces off with none other than Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer. Toto had offended Rudolph in some way or another, and the shiny-nosed punk was coming after him. A great battle ensued, and Toto came out on top, like he always did--The End.
That Christmas tale was a hit. You may have never heard of it, but it was an instant classic on par with Dickens’s A Christmas Carol in the faraway land of Myhouse. Mom loved it.

Writing Toto stories was undoubtedly the first step I took to becoming the writer I am today. It was the first time I truly comprehended that I could write words, my own, original, words that could be shared clearly to the world if I held my crayon steady enough and remembered to add periods to the ends of all my sentences.

I hope that makes sense. It might not. The previous paragraph sounds pretty touchy-feely and abstract when I read it out loud.

Anyhow, after I began to make up stories, I began to read them a lot more. I had read a few picture books before, of course, but I only started to become an avid reader after inventing Toto. Literature became all the more interesting to me after I had decided I needed more duck story ideas. I wanted to read other stories like the ones I’d written, and that’s really what set me and books onto the path towards a long-term love affair. My reading skill improved the more I read, and eventually I had exchanged Clifford the Big Red Dog for Guardians of Ga’Hoole and Flat Stanley for The Hardy Boys.

I began to bring books to school. Oftentimes, my group of friends was comprised solely of me and my books, because I had (and to some degree, still do have) a bad stuttering problem. I really didn’t like to talk with the other kids, for fear of being laughed at, again. So at this time, which was around when I was in the third or second grade, one would usually find me with my nose in a book at any given moment during school hours.

The somewhat antisocial tendencies I displayed during my earlier years of grammar school did benefit my writing in a few ways. It expanded my vocabulary, and it provided more time for contemplation than I may have gotten under other circumstances.

By the sixth grade, English class had gotten a bit more serious and students were now expected to be well-versed in the skill of writing… (dun dun dun!!) nonfiction. Since I had stopped writing Toto stories, I had in fact started reading more nonfiction than fiction, but writing it was a whole other story, pun unintentional.

Our teachers began to introduce us to the research paper and the essay, and to the standard five paragraph format that would reign as dictator for any school writing we did for a number of years. Contrary to the contempt many of my classmates harbor for it, I enjoy writing essays and research papers. I like doing research, and my diction is usually satisfactory enough to my teachers that they would award me with A’s.

Since middle school, teachers have always been telling me what a swell essay and research paper writer I am. I’d like to admit that it doesn’t sometimes give me a big head, but sometimes I really do have to remind myself that I’m not the greatest thing since C.S. Lewis. Still, the compliments I have received for my writing have certainly made me strive to write well. I wanted to prove to myself that each paper I wrote was not my one-time magnum opus, that I could reproduce what I had gotten so much praise for. Now that I was afraid of not getting a good enough grade on my current essay as I did on my last one, I worked twice as hard to write the best words I could.

Besides school writing, I also take pleasure in journal writing. When Diary of a Wimpy Kid came out in 2010, I started to write in a daily journal so I could be just like Greg Heffley. I still keep one, though I don’t really write in it as much as I’d like to. Journaling has given me the opportunity to write about anything I want to, and it requires no real editing or revising. My journal is a kind of “practice field” where I can write anything that comes to me and then see how it actually reads.

I always go through the same routine whenever I write something important. I head up to my room, close the door, and stay holed up in there until I finish whatever I’m working on. I hate to be interrupted for anything, even dinner. If anybody walks in on me and tries to strike up a conversation, I get very peeved very quickly. My best writing manifests itself when I focus on it and it alone. I produce straight rubbish otherwise.

In the end, I’m not exactly sure what precisely defines me as a writer. It could be my humble beginnings as an author of tales about talking ducks that face off against Santa’s reindeer. It could be my style, or the words I use, or the amount of commas in each of my paragraphs. I don’t know. Maybe I don’t need to know. Perhaps I just need to be confident in myself and my writing abilities, and have a blast while penning whatever I feel the need to. I guess I’ll figure it out someday.