Sometimes, I just want to write. To find some quiet corner or hole where nobody will see me or hear me and just release my imagination to eat away the paper until the holes left behind sprout words of such brilliance that, when I finally hold them up to the light, they look like stars.

But then reality strikes. I am reminded by my culture and my country and my friends and my family and myself that writing will not pay my bills, will not fill my fridge, will not ensure my comfort when I am older, and is something that people do in an attempt to avoid getting a real job. So I force myself out of my hole and go to work and when I come back to my paper, blank and whole and lifeless, I’m left wondering if anything I want to write will be worth it and, if it is, if life will let me finally write it.

But, every once and a while, I stare life in the face, lift my chin in defiance, and insist that I shall be a writer, that my words will burn through people’s souls and leave them wishing my stories were reality. And I sit and I write and I dream of the day when that is all I will have to do, when I will surround myself with books and maps and figurines in my home and type until my fingers bleed, and then type some more, because that is how you make a story. You create something and, when it is finally good enough, you cut it away so others can bleed with you.

– Katelyn Gentner, Future Novelist