Tip-Toeing into fiction

healing my inner child by painting pictures with words like I used to do.

Apr 24, 2025

As far back as I cam remember, I’ve always had a deep, abiding love for the written word. I know people think it’s an exaggeration when I say that I learned to read before I learned to walk, but I promise you that is not an exaggeration.

My 25 year-old, at the time, mother had learned about a new method that helped children to learn to read from an early age. My mother, being an avid reader , and being the daughter of an avid reader herself, decided to try this method out on her baby and make her an avid reader too. Armed with a stack of index cards, a red marker, and a list of the alphabet and phonics sounds— my mother set to work to create some flashcards and train her new little baby to become a lifelong reader, just like her.

My mother was determined and consistent with my training, and before long I was able to recognize simple words and make picture and word associations. The staff at my pediatrician’s office was always amazed at the level of conversation I could carry on with them at such a young age.

My parents continued to build on that foundation by reading me bedtime stories every night, having my older sister sit and read with me, or having me read to the family. And I loved every minute of it. Every story, every adventure , and every illustration delighted me. And I loved that I had everyone’s attention while I was reading to them or telling them a story.

Needless to say, that when I became school-aged English was my favorite subject. Learning how to weave my words together to tell the stories that I dreamed up in my mind. It made me feel magical, like I had the power to create any world I could dream up. And I did just that. I wrote all kinds of stories, letting my imagination bend this way and that. And my family was my audience, and they applauded every story that I managed to write.

But then there was a shift, a severance, a crack in the foundation— at the tender age of nine years old, my parents got divorced and my world changed.

As I adjusted to my new reality, my love of writing whimsical stories morphed into volumes of journal entries, poems, and song lyrics.

I think at some point I didn’t have the energy to create new worlds, I was doing all that I could to understand the new world that I found myself in and all the changes that came along with it.

And for years, that was the only kind of writing that I allowed myself to do. Journal entries and deeply emotional poetry that I was too scared to let anyone read because then people would be able to read all of the tears my poetry held.

Because I abandoned my first love of fiction , fairytale, and fantasy— I was afraid to try my hand at any form of fiction writing after so many years of allowing that muscle to atrophy.

It wasn’t until I was teaching middle school language arts that I allowed myself the space to even dip a toe into the fictional waters again. Creating short fiction moments ( I use the word ‘moments’ because that’s all they were— I wrote just enough to model, but never enough to complete a piece) for my students, modeling the kind of writing that I wanted them to attempt. It felt good, but those fiction ‘moments’— rarely, if ever, left the safety zone of my classroom.

I though that this experience with my students would be the jumpstart I needed to get back into my fiction bag; it was not. No matter how much time I spent creating for and with my students, I still couldn’t manage to complete a full piece of fictional writing on my own. It saddened me that I was still unable to fully access something I loved doing once upon a time.

I couldn't understand the blockage and I gave up trying to. I made peace with the fact that I was simply not a fiction writer. So, I continued to write what I had become familiar with and accustomed to over the years, more journaling and more poetry.

Cut to April 2025, and I have successfully managed to publish my first book of poetry.

And while I am over- the- moon with the publication of my very first chapbook. I am even more in awe of the continued lessons I am learning through this tiny extension of my heart that I’ve released into the world.

The creation of this book helped me to not only process a very painful heartbreak that I experienced, but it helped to unearth some much deeper wounds that had affected how I showed up for myself in many different areas of my life, including how I show up as a writer.

It took a lifetime, a heartbreak, and a creative healing project to help me understand what triggered a disconnect from my first love. And now that I have come to this realization, I feel free enough to make the attempt again.

I have decided to bring you along on my journey, as I make my attempt to play in fiction again.

I found a a Writer’s Oracle Deck, and I decided to use the cards to help encourage the Little Fiction Writer inside of me that I just rediscovered. I pulled two random cards that I attempted to weld together and create a story, or at least part of a story.

I didn’t want to scare my Little Writer so I gave her a 100 word minimum- just to get started.

Here is my first attempt (“keep in mind that I’m an artist, and I’m sensitive about my S#*@!” -Erykah Badu):

It was a sliver of light that beamed through the crack of the crumbling, concrete wall that taunted Cerani. The intoxicating fragrance of freedom that called to her and begged her to envelop herself in it.

Cerani spent every day and night dreaming about the destiny that awaited her beyond the walls of her gray imprisonment. No one had told Cerani that she would be granted release from the cage of her home village, but deep inside of her — there was an inner knowing that she carried with her for as long as she could remember. Deep down she knew that Leoverland was not the village in which she was meant to live and die.