Finals I Will Defeat You

I started writing when I was in middle school. A friend had shown me something she had written, a short fanfiction piece based in the Harry Potter universe, and I was hooked. Initially, I stayed in the world of fanfiction, bending established canon of various works such as Harry Potter and the Outlander series according to my own whims and predilections. I could make these characters do whatever—say whatever—I want. It was the agency and control I wielded in this imaginary world of mine that appealed to me so much. Eventually, by high school, I was applying this to original fiction.

I write in conjunction to my amateur artwork. Every time I start a new piece, I first sketch the character in my notebooks. I give her a sharp nose, a thin mouth, curly hair—anyone can tell when I have a new idea because suddenly my character is everywhere: on the backs of receipts, old homework assignments, discarded envelopes, you name it. I create shadows of her friends and family, mold her personality in the lines of her shoulders, and hint at her tragic past in scribbled asides. When I finally sit down in front of the computer, she already has an entire history before I type a single word.

The moment my narrative comes to life is in the first line of dialogue, a personal belief that reveals me as a writer more suited to crafting screenplays and short stories. I have no fondness for developing long, twisting plotlines or sending socio-political messages. I will even go further to add that my work is more like a series of character studies with generous doses of romance and eroticism. Magnifying glass in hand, I hold my people in close examination, teasing apart layers of motivation and feelings and tensions to find underlying truths about them.

As a result, I excel in dialogue and understated scenes, but lack in most other areas of writing. I registered for this workshop in the hopes that I would improve in introspection and theme-making—the “heavy stuff,” as I call it. After a few months of intensive practice, I can thankfully say that my writing has made progress. I am no longer as fearful or apprehensive as I once was about approaching serious subject matter with an equally serious hand, and nor have I lost any of the skills I had to begin with. Best of all, I was given the privilege of reading (and learning from) other people’s work.

A quick glance at my final portfolio shows that I tend to focus on the sexual and romantic. It is a celebration of human connection in relation to the horizontal tango from a woman’s perspective. While nowhere near original, my work manages to be unique in that my voice—a young, bisexual woman of color—is a voice not often heard in the literary world. Perhaps one day, I can inspire others like myself to do the same because our point of view is just as valuable, and enlightening.