My Teachers' Hatred Helped Me Write My First Novel.

So, I wrote a book. I'd like to think that it's a good one (I hope to God it's a good one!). It took me six years, from the age of sixteen until the age of twenty-two.

I'm sure it nearly killed me a few times. I know it got me kicked out of class and caused me to fail a few as well. It made me laugh, cry, want to smash my fist into the computer (or throw out the napkin/paper cup that I'd been writing it on!) in anger.

This was my life for that six years. I don't know how I survived!

The story is simple enough: Fallen Angels, Magic, Forbidden Love... the works. It's a YA Paranormal Romance. Cool, okay. Easy. WRONG!

I had to read the Bible, old testament and new. I had to do gigantic amounts of research on angels, and about Maine—where it's set—and about Faen creatures, and what the hell is a Rephaim? I learned not to use the Hebrew name for God because that's disrespectful, and I learned what was acceptable to change certain details about.

And I learned not to listen to those who told me that I'd never amount to anything.

As a kid, I had learning disabilities (still do) and my spelling wasn't great until I learned how to memorize literally every letter combination I could to overcome my dyslexia. Reading became my escape from the world. It was a world where I was made fun of for being too clumsy, too sickly, too socially awkward. Teachers would tell my parents that I was too morbid, that I was always reading when I shouldn't, and that I had to learn how to socialize. Kids would call me weird, a loser, stupid... and teachers started to call me the last one, too.

By my fourth year of high school, I'd given up. I couldn't do math properly (I have dyscalculia and nobody would freaking help me) so my teacher literally at the beginning of the year wrote me off as an idiot, instead of a student that needed extra help. So, I just stopped going to school. If I was an idiot in their eyes, if I'd never make it in anything, then I'd just quit.

And then, I started a program in grade eleven, called Genesis. I had two teachers who actually gave a crap about their students, all kids like me who had fallen through the cracks. We had a fridge, we had computers, we had couches! We could read whenever we wanted, if that's what we liked, which, duh I did, and we could study in a comfortable setting. It was that year that I sat down and decided that I had a story that needed to be told.

Don't get me wrong, I'd been writing forever before that. It was a passion. A hobby. But this story? It was different. It was... special to me. Because I was given the ability to give a crap about myself, thanks to my teachers. They told me that I was smart. They told me I'd go great places. That even if I was weird, it was what made me who I am and that they believed in me.

So, I sat down one day, and I began to write Dark One. Six years later, I look back on those formative years of school and I laugh. Because I published my book. And I actually give a shit about myself, sort of, in only the way that a writer can (self-deprecation is not exempt).

It's all because of the people who told me I'd never make it. And those that helped me realize I could.