my first novel: an ode to sisterhood

I never set out to be a writer. I just wanted to make my sisters happy.

As teenagers, we were closer than triplets. Two years separated each of us—me, the oldest; Allison, the middle child; Emily, the baby. We were best friends, co-conspirators, sworn secret keepers. We even had a nickname for ourselves: the Netilieiy, which meant, in the language we’d invented, “angels.”

We were troubled teens in a tragically common way. Cursed with hope; beset by symptoms of mental illness before we grasped what that really meant. As adults, we each received our own individually tailored psych diagnoses. No wonder we felt misunderstood, at the time. No one got us but us.

It started with note writing. While I sat trapped in class, distressed by the kids surrounding me, locking me in, I would pull out a composition notebook and write letters to my sisters. I loved coming up with silly scenes starring us and our fave anime characters. (It’s entirely possible that I’ve written more Hiei and Kurama fan fiction than anyone alive.) I passed them the notes in the halls of our high school, between classes, or when we got home.

It became our port in the storm. Pretending we were somewhere else, somewhere special, where we could be ourselves and no one would laugh, no one would judge, no one would look at us, baffled and horrified, if we talked about suicidal ideation, or cutting, or anxiety so severe it rendered us mute. Because in this other place, maybe those things wouldn’t happen. Maybe everything would be beautiful and perfect and full of light. Maybe we would be angels.

So, next, I wrote a book.

The main characters of this sci-fantasy novel were three sisters, reincarnations of a legendary trio of heroes called the Netilieiy. They traveled the galaxy and fought evil. I started the book when I was sixteen, and finished at eighteen. My sisters were my first beta readers, my earliest (and only) fans. They devoured chapters as fast as I could write them.

As I got older, and wiser, and more sophisticated, I wrote other things. Better things. After a while, I couldn’t remember much about that first book. I assumed it was an unmitigated, mortifying disaster, and I would cringe myself into a singularity if I ever reread it. Not that that was really an option. The Word doc had been lost in the jungle of my hard drive for over a decade. I never planned to revisit it.

Until I found it again a few weeks ago, by accident.

Do you remember when writing was just fun—a purely joyful romp? I think all writers get to have that, at some point. Of course, it never stops being fun, but it accumulates other descriptors. Stressful. Crisis-inducing. A constant reminder that you’re not doing as much as everyone else, or doing it as well, or doing, doing, doing. One more way of inviting yourself to feel lesser.

But when I wrote my first book, I didn’t care whether it was good. I didn’t think it needed to be. I couldn’t conceive of “author” as a real profession that might be available to me, an unspectacular girl who couldn’t keep up with her peers in any arena. I just wanted an escape. I wanted to offer my sisters an escape, too. We deserved to be happy; I understood that instinctively. So we clawed our way there, together. Through stories.

I hope it helped, in some small way.