This is the first in a series of written responses to prompts, provided by Gabriela Pereira of DYI MFA. I’ll do my best to keep them short and sweet!
I suspect my superpower is not writing per se, but planning (ie: storyboarding, creating backstory; the opposite of ‘pantsing’).
From as early as I could write & spell, I busied myself drawing maps, creating place- and character-names, imagining back-stories, and setting the stage for many a story… (To this day, they’re all sitting on a shelf in my office, waiting with dusty, inert patience to be brought alive.)
Writing came later, catalyzed by a trio of elements.
- A job at the library while in high school fed my ceaseless appetite for books, expanding my mind – and my vocabulary;
- OCD-fueled perfectionism helped polish my craft (there, their and they’re? You can be absolutely sure I *don’t* mix those up);
- Unremitting introvertism kept me in my room late at night, trapped at my keyboard as words burst forth from my fingertips.
Combined, I use my powers of planning, and my honed writer’s craft, in the quest to reach the mighty ship, ‘Author’, battling that evil monkey, ‘The Procrastinator’, who plots tirelessly to bring an end to my written endeavours.
