write what you know

Writing 101

Write what you know

That is something I hear often so I’ll start with that. Even if this is a public platform and I’m writing so other people can read it I’d rather keep my identity a secret, even if it's for the time being. I was born and raised in Ethiopia, a country located in the horn of Africa. As such English is my second language.

I’m the first born child for my parents and have a little brother I adore. Even though we have our bad days which are more often than not now that both of us are growing up and discovering our self’s he is the best person in my life.

Self discovery wasn't something that came easy to me. Neither at home nor at school could I fit into a role. At school I tried fitting in with almost all the groups but in every case I stood out like a sour thumb. Which led me to believe that something was wrong with me and for a while I truly believed that but one day I was reading a book, I don't even remember the name right now, and like a ton of bricks it hit me. I didn't have to fit in; I was a perfect kind of abnormal, the perfect kind of me.

That is when I started reading and watching things that were as different from our normal perception of normal as possible. Whether it was sci-fi or fantasy I was engrossed. I went through books and movie series in records of time and then in the time gap that laid between finishing reading a good book and finding my next good read I started to wonder if I, someone who didn't relate with the word "normal" could create something so absurdly abnormal that someone could be hooked to reading it as I was to my books. And that is how I started writing.

as most writers in this day and age I started with fan-fiction which truthfully I’m not proud of and I know somewhere in the dark corners of the Internet they still exist but then I started developing my own character, making a world so complex in the bounds on my pages that in boggled the mind of my few readers. It was like a fuel to a fantasy that I would never wake up from and the best part was I didn't want to.

Writing is like putting on the perfect pair of glasses that redefine your vision with alterations of your imagination its perfect in every way if you want it to be or wonderfully gruesome. Sometimes reading back things I wrote years ago sends shivers down my spine and goose bumps on my skin. You could make or break a world as you please. And that is the how the knight a writer came to be.