My Writing Journey in a Flash
Photographer: Laura Bâlc (@laurabalc)
I began writing when I was ten. I got a short story published in a local newspaper when I was in the seventh grade. In eighth grade I had a breakthrough moment when I read a story I had written in class and everyone applauded at the end. I was surprised, and it made me wonder.
I can’t say I treated writing as something serious or un-serious – I didn’t really think about it much. I just wrote from time to time and enjoyed it. That hasn’t changed much. I still enjoy it, except now I take it seriously because I know how powerful it can be. A few years back I posted a poem online, “The End of Seeking.” Soon after, I received a message from the mother of a friend saying, “Thank you for touching my heart with your poetry.” And there it was, my purpose fulfilled. To be able to touch someone’s heart through the words I wrote made me more aware of my responsibility as a writer. Not in an overwhelming way, but in a warming way. It warmed my heart.
I studied Journalism as a BA and decided once and for all that journalism had nothing to do with creative writing. Then I did an MFA in Creative Writing, where I learned how to write for the theatre. I was naturally adept, and I loved thinking of life as a grand play. The roles we play, the costumes, the rituals. It spoke to me. It made life easier to understand and much more fun to live.
Poetry came easily and still does. It’s like breathing. I can write a poem at any time of the day. It might take a while to trim it into its final form, but writing the poem itself is natural. By the time I self-published The Paths We Travel Alone in 2022, I had written hundreds of poems. During the pandemic, I wrote one or two poems per day for a whole year.
My first novel, on the other hand, proved to be hard work. The Paper Boat taught me discipline, structure and commitment. I knew it had to be written. No one else could write it, and I knew that if I didn’t, I would regret it for the rest of my life. It combined everything I knew: flash writing, stream of consciousness, trance writing, radical imagination, poetry and theatre. It took courage, and my heart was happy to offer it.
Photographer: Laura Bâlc (@laurabalc)
Now that I am finalizing the last chapter of The Paper Boat with my editors, Genie and Mihai, I am already working on my second novel (sci-fi) and my second book of poetry while also trimming my fifth play. And who knows... Maybe when I finish all of these projects I’ll discover that I want to become a marine biologist next. But even if I do, I don’t think I’ll stop writing.
