Gifts of the People

I think everyone has a gift, a talent, a need to share themself with the world and let themself shine. For some, it is hard to meet their dreams, stealing as many years from time as they can to hone their gift, until the right moment comes and they are finally forced into making the star in theirself glimmer in the breathtaking spot light. For others, it comes differently. Some rush into it, sure of their dream from the moment they take their first breath. I'm a little like that, I suppose you might say.

As a young teenage writer, I know life has been kind to me. I have a room over my head, two supporting parents (when they aren't yelling at me because I did some wrong), ambition, and as much as I try to be modest about it, talent. I many elements in my life that make me who I am--which I haven't really figured out yet. My friends are always telling me what I am: caring, beautiful, fashionable . . . but I don't know how to believe that. Yet. I think someday, maybe someday, I just have to proove to myself that I am all those things, like I've already made them believe.

Anyways, when I was younger, I didn't have the luxury of writing like I do these days. I had music--I was singing before I could talk--and art. Creativity and imagination as a bonus. Maybe plop a romance in there that I didn't understand. I honestly thought I was going to be a famous singer like Taylor Swift someday. She was my superstar--my role model. But learning of her music is also what caused me to drift farther and farther from my at-home family, the seperation still remaining today. Not the point here. Moving on . . .

But as I said, I did have creativity and imagination, like most children. Like most of my friends, I was tagged in Talented and Gifted, and at recess we'd have live role plays where we'd love and fight bad guys. It was our life. Most of all, it was real.

Time skip, and we're in fifth grade. I've started my first book, inspired after being introduced to the realm of young adult books. I never did finish that book, but it was a good start. I can now see how that led into the development I have today.

Skip another year, and I'm being homeschooled online because I'm so smart the school couldn't keep up with me. I've started another book, having abandoned the other, and it takes me months to get 5,000 words before I finally get stuck and start another, playing with the greek gods like I'd always loved. I found the school NaNoWriMo club--a basic writer's club for anyone who wrote books. You didn't have to participate in the activity. You just had to write.

Anyways, the support of all the people in the club is what helped me finish that third book. Novella, if you wanna classify it correctly, but I'd never been so proud. 18,000 words in one book, and I was finished, already set up for sequel and gaining more skill and development with every word I wrote.

Fast forward to today, and I actually haven't finished another piece, unless you count the small novelette I did in January. But I do have good starts on every piece I have saved either on my jump drive or my computer--and I plan to finish something before the end of June. Before the end of the school year.

If there's one thing that I have learned from my journey of talent, it's that convincing the world you have talent is the easy part. Convincing yourself, and learning to stand on your own two feet is the hard part. I have myself pretty convinced--and I truthfully must say I have no doubts that I'll be published someday. That maybe one day--I'll be drinking coffee eww, no, not coffee, flavored water with Cynthia Hand and Richelle Mead getting ready for a tour or something because I'm a bestseller. Why a bestseller, when I'm supposedly so modest? It's not for the fame, I'll tell you that. It's to have touched someone's life--someone's heart--so deeply that they cried or laughed. That they felt for the characters.

Another thing: Don't deny yourself, your heart, from doing what it needs to. You'll become stronger just by leading yourself on the right path--and not letting anyone else choose for you. That's how you'll win. That's how everyone will win.

Love you <3
Cassandra Bloom, the someday bestselling author