My Potential

Fourteen years.

It has been fourteen years since I wrote my first true short story, “Model Wedding”. As cliché as it is, I have written stories and poems for as long as I can remember, and so there are poems and chapters of stories that exist before “Model Wedding”. However, this story is the first time that I can remember writing a complete piece of fiction, where my true passion in writing lies. It was written for the Stanford Gifted Youth Program—an ungraded summer program for high school students gifted in different academic areas—and, at the time, it was my proudest accomplishment. Even the instructor, a published short story writer, praised it, particularly the revision.

The story is about a young woman in an abusive relationship who must decide if she’s going to marry her fiancé. As she goes through the motions of her wedding day, she reflects on their relationship and how it has affected her life, from starting her modeling career to isolating her from her loved ones. In the end, instead of saying “I do,” she tells her fiancé that she does not love him and reclaims her life from him.

“Model Wedding” is told entirely in first person, through a combination of a narrative present story line and flashbacks. It struggles with the themes of love, abuse, and self-image—the last of which I was struggling with myself at the time that I wrote the story (and still do). It was the first time that I had put so much of my own raw emotion so literally into a story, and I have rarely done this again since.

I always put a little bit of myself into the main characters of my stories, even if it’s more buried, like in their personalities (for instance, Mikhail’s moral struggle due to wanting to keep his family safe in “Red Shift”). However, “Model Wedding” is one of the few stories in which I put a noticeable part of myself into the main character, the only other stories on Vocal being “Do Not Open,” “Dates, Not Dating,” and “Beautiful Dreamer, Part One, Part Two, and Part Three”. I have not been as open to exploring who I am or the problems that I have in my writing.

Instead, my writing has become more focused on what I have noticed outside of me, what I have seen in the world. I now include more diverse characters, such as in “Patient Zero” and “Beautiful Dreamer, Part One, Part Two, and Part Three” (whether that is well done or not is up for debate). Sometimes consciously, sometimes subconsciously, I more often incorporate issues such as inequality than more personal issues such as self-image. Perhaps I have done this because I need to get out of my own head; perhaps I have just explored my own issues to death.

It's amazing how much fourteen years can change things. The person I was when I wrote “Model Wedding” is not the person that I am now—and yet, that person is still here. My writing has not changed that much. Yes, it has strengthened with everything that I have done to improve it. My descriptions are no longer as cringe-worthy—I am not describing a self-described fat person as “pudgy with miniature cushions for arms”—nor am I using characters’ accents in a way that seems to make fun of them (I hope). My view of love has also evolved, becoming far more complex and showing as such in all its forms throughout all of my stories. However, I still write in primarily first person, I love using flashbacks when they seem appropriate, and I won’t give you an easy, tied-up-with-a-bow happy ending.

No, what has changed is how I view the world. I don’t see only my problems now. I see that there is a world of problems that deserve to be represented. Am I the one who should represent them all? Probably not, but I’m trying anyway. Should I try and explore my own problems more, like the early days? Might be worth a shot, but I don’t want to give up my new worldview, either. What’s my next step, then? Finding a balance, something that allows me to explore myself and the world around me, so that I can put my own emotions into the context of my worldview. Then, maybe, I will be able to reach my full potential as a writer.