By Amy Zhang
Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.
~Rainer Maria Rilke
Growing up, writing was something I'd been taught to scoff at. I was going to be a biochemical engineer. I was going to be a genetic pathologist. I was going to be an aeronautical physicist or a neuropsychologist or an architectural historian. I wanted to be something that came with a long, fancy title after my name and a Ph.D. in front of it, like my dad, the nuclear physicist, or my mom, the actuary scientist. Not an author.
Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.
~Rainer Maria Rilke
Growing up, writing was something I'd been taught to scoff at. I was going to be a biochemical engineer. I was going to be a genetic pathologist. I was going to be an aeronautical physicist or a neuropsychologist or an architectural historian. I wanted to be something that came with a long, fancy title after my name and a Ph.D. in front of it, like my dad, the nuclear physicist, or my mom, the actuary scientist. Not an author.
Yes, I loved to read. Yes, sometimes I wrote a poem that was featured in the school's newspaper. But I had grown up in an environment that valued intelligence above creativity, and to me, writing was a joke. An English major? Please. I was meant to go into pre-med or pre-law... wasn't I? That's what I had been told growing up, and my parents had drilled it into me so deeply that I had never considered anything else.
In eighth grade, I moved from St. Louis, Missouri (population: 4 million) to Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin (population: 7,000... barely). The culture shock was too much for me to handle. I became moody, angry, and rather unpredictable. I didn't like my new friends because they weren't my old ones. I hated Wisconsin because it wasn't Missouri (also, it had cows... and no decent malls). My transcripts had gotten messed up during the move, so I ended up taking algebra twice and being put in an eighth-grade level science instead of biology. Also, my new school didn't offer any of the honors courses I was supposed to take. Suddenly, I was an angst-ridden teenager with too much time on her hands and no idea what to do with it.
So I escaped into writing. My first story was written in a blue notebook fondly named Ricardo. Sometime while I drafted that first novel, I realized that I was not, in fact, a terrible writer. (Looking through Ricardo now, though, I find this was a rather mistaken realization.) More than that, I realized that I liked writing. I liked the way the words poured out of me and turned my frustrations into lengthy paragraphs about characters I'd grown to love. For the first time in my life, I'd found something that I was both good at and enjoyed doing — not like studying for SATs (which I'd started in seventh grade, at my parents' insistence), or playing piano for six hours.
My search for publication, on the other hand, began as my personal rebellion. My genius parents, naturally, did not approve of the hours I spent huddled over my laptop, hours I should have been using to read Les Misérables or learn calculus. I wanted to be published, not because I wanted to share my story with the world, but because I wanted to prove that I could.
I began querying my second novel, a YA fantasy, on my fifteenth birthday. With little knowledge about the industry, I contacted more than forty agents, receiving only about seven requests for partial or full manuscripts. I was a teenager — I thought I was prepared for rejection.
I wasn't.
After taking my SAT during the winter of freshman year and failing to score as high as my parents expected (having changed "studying time" to "WIP editing time" on my schedule), I was beginning to have doubts. After all, what were my odds? I was fifteen. I was a fangirl, not an author. I had seen the rates of success in the publishing industry, and they didn't point in my favor. Thousands and thousands of people were better than me and had more experience than me and had just as much unrelenting passion. And then there was still the small fact that I was fifteen. I needed to get into a good college; I needed to major in a useful subject; I needed to get a good job that could support my normal, two-story suburban future home and my normal, 2.36 future children. Writing wasn't the path to reaching these goals; neuropsychology was. Or genetic pathology. Or biochemical engineering.
Also, at the time, I had absolutely no one to support me. My parents were wonderful and loving and (painfully) intelligent, but they had never taken my writing seriously. At best, they indulged me. At worst, they told me to forget "this writing thing" and study for upcoming ACTs. I had never told anyone outside of my immediate family about my passion (obsession) for writing, much less admitted that I was looking for publication. The snarky voice in my head, in addition to the traditional lines ("You're not pretty enough, skinny enough, athletic enough, smart enough"), began to whisper that I would never be good enough. In a classic teenage identity crisis, I was beginning to lose faith in myself and my writing abilities. Being starved for encouragement, I was starting to think that this dream would likely soon join the rest in my graveyard of memories.
Three months after I had started querying, though, I got the most wonderful rejection of my life. The agent decided to pass on my partial, but said that she would be willing to look at revisions. Admittedly, I was discouraged at first. At that point, I had already rewritten my novel seven times. Revisions would be a huge time commitment, and my parents would be far from pleased. On top of that, I had at least some semblance of a social life. I was involved in clubs, extracurriculars, and sports, and my inner teenage girl wanted to flirt and go shopping and spend my Saturdays somewhere other than my room, with someone other than my laptop.
But that rejection gave me hope that maybe I could do it. Maybe I really could get that frustrating, demanding, annoyingly beloved manuscript published. So I got to work, locking myself in my room again with my laptop balanced on my knees. I emerged a month later with essentially a new novel, a new understanding of the industry, and a new faith in myself.
I began looking for representation again in late January. In two weeks, I sent out nine queries, received four full requests, and received an offer from the same agent who had suggested I revise my novel. I got her e-mail in Global Studies class on February tenth and promptly proceeded to fall out of my chair.
I realized that day that I didn't want to be a biochemical engineer, or a doctor, or a lawyer. At all. Those had never been my dreams. I wanted to write.
So I went home. I wrote. And I haven't stopped.
In eighth grade, I moved from St. Louis, Missouri (population: 4 million) to Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin (population: 7,000... barely). The culture shock was too much for me to handle. I became moody, angry, and rather unpredictable. I didn't like my new friends because they weren't my old ones. I hated Wisconsin because it wasn't Missouri (also, it had cows... and no decent malls). My transcripts had gotten messed up during the move, so I ended up taking algebra twice and being put in an eighth-grade level science instead of biology. Also, my new school didn't offer any of the honors courses I was supposed to take. Suddenly, I was an angst-ridden teenager with too much time on her hands and no idea what to do with it.
So I escaped into writing. My first story was written in a blue notebook fondly named Ricardo. Sometime while I drafted that first novel, I realized that I was not, in fact, a terrible writer. (Looking through Ricardo now, though, I find this was a rather mistaken realization.) More than that, I realized that I liked writing. I liked the way the words poured out of me and turned my frustrations into lengthy paragraphs about characters I'd grown to love. For the first time in my life, I'd found something that I was both good at and enjoyed doing — not like studying for SATs (which I'd started in seventh grade, at my parents' insistence), or playing piano for six hours.
My search for publication, on the other hand, began as my personal rebellion. My genius parents, naturally, did not approve of the hours I spent huddled over my laptop, hours I should have been using to read Les Misérables or learn calculus. I wanted to be published, not because I wanted to share my story with the world, but because I wanted to prove that I could.
I began querying my second novel, a YA fantasy, on my fifteenth birthday. With little knowledge about the industry, I contacted more than forty agents, receiving only about seven requests for partial or full manuscripts. I was a teenager — I thought I was prepared for rejection.
I wasn't.
After taking my SAT during the winter of freshman year and failing to score as high as my parents expected (having changed "studying time" to "WIP editing time" on my schedule), I was beginning to have doubts. After all, what were my odds? I was fifteen. I was a fangirl, not an author. I had seen the rates of success in the publishing industry, and they didn't point in my favor. Thousands and thousands of people were better than me and had more experience than me and had just as much unrelenting passion. And then there was still the small fact that I was fifteen. I needed to get into a good college; I needed to major in a useful subject; I needed to get a good job that could support my normal, two-story suburban future home and my normal, 2.36 future children. Writing wasn't the path to reaching these goals; neuropsychology was. Or genetic pathology. Or biochemical engineering.
Also, at the time, I had absolutely no one to support me. My parents were wonderful and loving and (painfully) intelligent, but they had never taken my writing seriously. At best, they indulged me. At worst, they told me to forget "this writing thing" and study for upcoming ACTs. I had never told anyone outside of my immediate family about my passion (obsession) for writing, much less admitted that I was looking for publication. The snarky voice in my head, in addition to the traditional lines ("You're not pretty enough, skinny enough, athletic enough, smart enough"), began to whisper that I would never be good enough. In a classic teenage identity crisis, I was beginning to lose faith in myself and my writing abilities. Being starved for encouragement, I was starting to think that this dream would likely soon join the rest in my graveyard of memories.
Three months after I had started querying, though, I got the most wonderful rejection of my life. The agent decided to pass on my partial, but said that she would be willing to look at revisions. Admittedly, I was discouraged at first. At that point, I had already rewritten my novel seven times. Revisions would be a huge time commitment, and my parents would be far from pleased. On top of that, I had at least some semblance of a social life. I was involved in clubs, extracurriculars, and sports, and my inner teenage girl wanted to flirt and go shopping and spend my Saturdays somewhere other than my room, with someone other than my laptop.
But that rejection gave me hope that maybe I could do it. Maybe I really could get that frustrating, demanding, annoyingly beloved manuscript published. So I got to work, locking myself in my room again with my laptop balanced on my knees. I emerged a month later with essentially a new novel, a new understanding of the industry, and a new faith in myself.
I began looking for representation again in late January. In two weeks, I sent out nine queries, received four full requests, and received an offer from the same agent who had suggested I revise my novel. I got her e-mail in Global Studies class on February tenth and promptly proceeded to fall out of my chair.
I realized that day that I didn't want to be a biochemical engineer, or a doctor, or a lawyer. At all. Those had never been my dreams. I wanted to write.
So I went home. I wrote. And I haven't stopped.
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