So I had an idea.  What if I wrote about my life, but happening to someone else?

The character’s name was Naomi Odette Knox and I wrote about 20,000 words of her story before I backed away.  I’ve wanted to write about my life ever since I started writing.  The way I intertwine myself with my characters has constantly varied since I wrote my story about Mr. Cheese in kindergarten.  (That was an epic series of stories by the way, I should definitely write about it soon).

So once again, when preparing for this years NaNoWriMo, I decided to give my own life a try.  The past few years have been so incredible and so strange, it’s hard to explain to anyone.  I was asked to create a six-word summary of my story before I started and what I came up with was “nineteen and finishing graduate school.”  You’re right, it’s only five words, but I was put on the spot.  That one line can be, and is, interpreted in so many different ways and people have so many opinions about it.  The thing is, that line doesn’t just describe the story I tried to write, it described my life.

I started right after I moved to Boston in order to write about the excitement of getting my first job and my first apartment, all while trying to manage the fact that I wouldn’t be able to start them until after I turned eighteen due to legal reasons.  For most people, turning eighteen doesn’t mean much.  Cigarettes, porn, and voting.  But for mean it meant being able to sign a lease, accepting my job at the MFA where I am required to drive a van, and a whole slew of less interesting things that involved money, loans. and taxes.

I wanted to capture that time.  The excitement, the anxiety, the roller coaster from the wonder and loneliness of building a life. In the past year and a half I have done so much.  Much more than a simple acknowledgment of my age allows.  I am young, it’s true.  I’m sure when I get to be thirty I’ll smile and shake my head at what I was like in my late teens when I would say things like “Being in your twenties in Boston…” only to be set straight by overly helpful friends reminding me that I’m still a teenager.  (That fact still blows my mind).

But it was too close and I didn’t plan the story enough.  I found myself facing the months of uncertainty and loneliness that paved the way for my new life, and couldn’t get myself to write.  Thankfully, I keep a journal so that in ten years, when I am ready to write this part of my story, I’ll be able to do so accurately.

Don’t fear though, I’m still writing.  I blew the dust off of a story that I started over the summer that has been completely planned out, the world created and the characters born.  Now I’m completely immersed in that world, happy to leave my fictional autobiography to ferment in the back of my harddrive.