For #19 of the ask writer prompt, why did you start writing?
There's two parts to the answer.
First: I always had pictures and characters and stories in my head as long as I can remember. I used to play along to audio dramas (I vividly remember pretending to be Simba singing my heart out about wanting to be king while perched on the backrest of my couch) when I was a child. It's a lot easier for me to understand some fictional character's emotions, desires and goals than my own. If there was a show or book I liked, I couldn't help but make up little scenes in my head that place into some of the empty spots every story has. Or I'd put myself into that world because it was a much better world than we actually live in (or so it seemed to my child-self).
But I actually started by drawing those characters that I came to love, that I wanted to be, that I made up myself. Because I usually think in pictures and images first, it was more natural to draw them out onto a piece of paper. That is the best approximation to my thoughts, if I could draw that well that is.
Second: I have been in love with the process of handwriting, letters and words for just as long. I used to copy passages and paragraphs from my favorite books into my notebook by hand, color coded, intensely careful to write as beautifully or stylistically as I could. I would do it to my favorite comics as well, writing out the drawn parts of the panel just so that I would have more words to write. And I sometimes still do that, like I started a notebook about my manga collection where I write every blurb by hand with different colors, trying to match my handwriting to the style of the series' logo.
Then I started to just draw words, scribble little graffiti into my school books, be as artistic with the form of the letters as I could be. Because words in my mind appear as the combination of letters, in different fonts or colors depending on the context. It made sense to try to put that onto paper this way.
At some point I combined the two, my never ending thinking about stories and my obsession with writing. I handwrote all my stories in the beginning and if I come across a difficult passage or need to brainstorm a story I still do. I combined them because I wanted to share myself with others and these stories and these words is all I really am, so when I finally was given access to the internet and found a community to share art with, I never stopped.
I've been writing and making up stories since I can remember and I shared them with the world for half my life now. There's no me without it.
