Lately, I’ve been going through my old things. There’s always been a sediment of it coating closet floors. I have trouble getting rid of things, if they once held any sentimental value at all.
To say I’ve been creating stories as long as I remember wouldn’t mean much, as my memory is poor to say the least. It would be more precise to say that I’ve been doing so for as long as I possessed the capability to, and I know that because of the notebooks that litter my bookshelf.
2010: Preschool Journal
I assume this one was a collection of assignments from my preschool class. I’ve been told I was a really early reader— I learned before I turned one, they call it “hyperlexia”?— and writing followed quickly. I’ve seen some really odd drawings from this age, mostly exotic animals eating other animals, but I couldn’t find them for this project. Maybe for the best.
2015: 3rd Grade “Me Journal”
This journal was for my third grade class. I’m fairly sure we had assigned writing prompts in here, but my work shows no evidence of it. In here, I wrote an ongoing Pokémon comic and about the intricacies of the dragon world. I had a few stories in here, but they’re, for the most part, too illegible to read. (I was ahead for my age in reading, but decidedly behind in handwriting!)
2015-2019: The Google Docs Discovery
There is a large gap here that I feel needed to be addressed. The explanation is simple: I got an email address and began typing in Google Docs. I still have a lot of that writing. It’s. . . wild. It wasn’t in a notebook, though, and I didn’t have photos, so it felt incorrect to include it here. Perhaps on another page.
2019: Reading Journal
For middle school, I started going to a Montessori school (affectionately, it was a weird hippie school). We were required to do weekly reading reflections, all hand-written. This turned out to be a great thing for my development of my already solid love of reading.
During this era, I doodled (of course) dragons on everything. I got a talking-to a few times when they ended up on exams.
2021: Worldbuilding Journal
In 2021, I tried my hand at some fantasy worldbuilding. I started filling this notebook I’d gotten as a birthday gift with the lore I came up with. I didn’t draft anything first, just started writing in the gorgeous notebook. I wish I still had that tenacity. The world never had a name that stuck. I wrote a few iterations of stories in there.
2022: Commonplace Book
This was the time I decided I wanted to work on a video game. It was a pretty long-lived project, all things considered! Most of this book is filled with doodles of the characters and dialogue snippets. I ended up finishing a rough, text adventure demo of the game in 2023. It’s still on itch.io, I’m pretty sure.
2023: Commonplace Book
Lots of “fan art” in here. Mostly, this concerned original Dungeons and Dragons characters, but I have some art from media I was consuming at the time, too. I’d also made a habit of writing handwritten stories about them in incredibly small handwriting. I’d kind of drifted from drawing dragons to drawing humans/human-like faces. As far as I know, this is the last sketchbook I actually completed.
2024-2025: Empty Planner
This planner, from when I first arrived at college to when I finished my first year, is completely blank and empty. I don’t have any creative notebooks from the time.
2026: Comic Diary
Now, I’ve circled back around to periodic creative writing as an academic project. The results will be posted under “Comic Diary” on this website. I’m excited to see what comes of it!