I was doomed to be an English major (read: book nerd) since before I could read. I remember insisting that my mother read me at least three books before I could sleep. I always loved reading and being read to but writing was always something that I wouldn't be sure about. I loved to dabble in short stories and it seemed to me that writers were born, not made. There was absolutely no way in which I saw the people who made books as writers, they were authors. That idea persisted until I was twelve and my school ran a Scholastic Book Drive. That's when I met the author that would inspire me to be an active writer.
Amelia Atwater-Rhodes published her first book when she was just thirteen. It was called In the Forests of the Night and featured the William Blake poem "The Tiger" as an introduction. It follows a vampire named Risika. Let it be said and repeated: Twilight was not the first vampire book to captivate teenage girls and Atwater-Rhodes can take Stephenie Meyer down any day (in my opinion, at least).
Atwater-Rhodes has published about a book a year since her first book even when she was in college and even now that she has graduated, is teaching, and is getting married (what a woman!)
The best part is, she is only a year older than I am. She proved to me that you can be a writer at any age. You don't just magically become an author when you graduate from some esteemed school with a PhD in Creative Writing. My little short stories and poems suddenly had weight and meaning. They had value. They could be important, they could be published.
My writing wasn't silly, it wasn't some hobby that I had to put off and hide away and pretend I didn't do.
In this season for being thankful, for being appreciative, I must say that I am most thankful for this wonderful author and her books. She made writing a world that I could be part of even as a teenager, and even now as an emerging adult.
Thank you, Amelia.
To everyone out there, I encourage you to find a writer like this who has meaning to you, who can open up the world of writing and make it accessible to you. Above all, I encourage you to write :)
