Reena - the unborn story of the lesbian vampire warrior princess

"Reena, the vampire warrior princess, was standing on the marble balcony bathing in the moonlight, silvery and shimmery. Her red hair flowing in the wind behind her. Warm blood dripping off her long fingers onto the ivory stones."

That's all I remember from my first novel, which I never finished.

I started to write it when I was thirteen, with an HB4 graphite pencil (school mandatory) on A4-sized printing papers my mom got me from her office.

I had no idea about the story line or what would happen to Reena, the vampire warrior princess. I only had this image of her in my mind, and I knew that I wanted to write her story. So I just sat down at my study table and wrote, and some story started to unfold. I can't even recall what it was.

I was about fifty pages deep, many lines erased until the paper tore, when I started to have questions about my vampire warrior princess. Probably because I started to have questions about life.

At the same time, I discovered Wicca and decided to become a vegetarian. We started to learn about Sappho at school. So I wondered, could a vampire become vegetarian? What if I were to weave more magic into my story? Her best friend could be a witch, and they'd fall in love with each other while fighting idunnowhat.

Then Van Helsing came out, and Kate Beckinsale looked alarmingly similar to the heroine living inside my head. I discovered plagiarism as a concept and was scared shitless that I would somehow end up in jail for stealing ideas I had never stolen.

I ended up with a major writer's block.

Only thirteen, and already suffering like a real writer. Wouldn't Hemingway be proud of me?

I knew almost nothing about Hemingway except that my grandmother considered him the greatest writer who had ever lived and that he was both tormented and alcoholic. Naturally, I assumed those were mandatory qualifications for the profession. I was thirteen and lacked access to booze, but I was already making excellent progress on the suffering.

I figured there's nothing new under the sun. I can't possibly come up with an idea that wasn't written about in one way or another.

I was ready to give up.

But my cousin, who was also my pen pal and fellow writer, advised me to show my pages to my literature teacher. He did so with his poems, and his teacher gave him valuable advice and feedback every time.

He reminded me that I am supposed to be a prodigy. I taught myself reading and writing at the age of four because I was so fascinated by these magical signs that could hide entire worlds inside a book. I won my first writing challenge at age seven (okay, with the help of my mom...) and was published in the regional newsletter. Surely I had a future as a writer.

I did what he said.

I took my fifty pages to school and asked my teacher to take a look at it. To help me become a real writer with real stories so I can end up on the shelves with my books, like Hemingway.

I was full of hope.

If anyone, a literature teacher knows how to get out of this mess I found myself in. She sat me down on one of the chairs while she was reading my ugly handwriting.

I imagined her rising from her chair and telling me that it was rough, of course, but promising. That she would help me. That she'd be my mentor.

When she did stand up after reading, exactly the way I imagined, she looked at me.

Then she walked to the window and stared out of it, with a long sigh.

Not exactly what I imagined.

My stomach dropped and the room started to shrink. Even before she spoke, I knew I was about to receive a sentence.

What she said then haunted me for over a decade.

"One doesn't just become the next Hemingway. You can't learn to be so excellent at writing. You have to be born knowing how to do that. And child, no one is born like that except Hemingway himself."

"But...," I started, but she hushed me.

She told me to give up on writing because no one reads trash like this about lesbian vampire warrior princesses and their witch friends. Where is the story? Where does this go? My metaphors are flat and too basic. No, no and no! Give up on this. I could write anything else, but I'd never be half as good as Hemingway was.

Then I went home and cried for days.

I burned my manuscript in the fireplace. I borrowed a Hemingway collection from my grandma and actually read what he wrote.

Then I cried even more.

Truly, no one can be as good as him. (Except Steinbeck and Salinger, as I figured later and decided that they were just as good.) I wanted to be good as Hemingway, so my grandma would be proud of me and love my writing just as much as she loved his.

I started to doubt that writing could be mastered. I never questioned if Hemingway was really born like this or he wrote endlessly for years before he found his voice? And if yes, how did he do that?

I just imagined all these great writers were born like this, wrote like this since the beginning, and just sent their manuscripts to a publisher and got immediately published.

And there was me. A child who can't even come up with a single original idea, but some trash no one would ever read anyway, despite it was written and turned into movies several times before.

So I stopped writing for over a decade. What's the point if one can't be a good writer after all?

Though, I didn't truly stop.

I had dozens of notebooks where I wrote down my novel ideas. Others in which I collected my favorite phrases from my favorite books, and plenty in which I wrote fragments of poems, haikus and lines that came to out of nowhere and thought they could be useful later if I ever become a writer.

It's just each time I sat down to write, I became sad about the idea that I won't ever be a good writer. So I didn't even start working on these ideas.

I never told anyone again about my dreams of becoming a writer. Never mentioned about winning the writing challenge as a child. No one knew about my notebooks beside my bed and the ones I carried everywhere in my shoulder bag.

That was until quite recently. So that decade is more like two... and truth is, I could write that book if I wanted now.

I know how to plot. I know how to build characters. I know that lesbian vampire warrior princesses are hardly the strangest thing readers have encountered.

But I don't want to write Reena's story anymore. And it has nothing to do with criticism, fear of plagiarism, or all the nonsense my teacher told me.

It's because that girl who started to write this story is gone.

I just can't hear her voice anymore.

Or perhaps not gone, but merely hidden.

Sometimes I still see a shadow that reminds me of her.

A thirteen-year-old with an HB4 pencil, writing on stolen office paper while everyone else was watching television. A child who believed stories appeared because you sat down and listened to their magic. A child who hadn't yet learned how easily voices could be silenced.

Sometimes, late at night, I remember the very first image.

Reena, the vampire warrior princess, standing on a marble balcony. Her red hair flowing behind her. Blood dripping from her fingertips onto ivory stone.

She's there. Frozen in the silver moonlight, waiting...

Maybe, for me to finally write her story. To find her ending.

Or maybe for me to locate that chamber deep inside me where I locked my voice away, and finally let it free.