why I write

On my 8th birthday, my Aunt Pixie gave me a small yellow diary with a heart lock and key. I loved it and filled every page with drawings and stories. I was hooked. I filled journal after journal all the way through high school. Growing up with two sisters, two brothers, and our food-chain of pets (including a rat named Patches, a cat named Simba, and Houdini the boa constrictor), I had loads of topics to write about and faithfully documented my daily life.

When I was around nine or ten, my siblings and I were playing at our cousins’ house when their grandma visited. She offered to read our auras. I didn’t know if I believed in such a thing but thought it would be interesting to hear what she had to say about mine. She declared that my aura showed I would be a Writer.

At that point I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be when I grew up. I loved reading and writing, but I also wanted to do something big and grand—maybe become a singer like Paula Abdul or an actress like Tiffany Amber Theisen or a teacher like Mrs. Snow, my guitar-playing kindergarten teacher. I worried that I had to be a writer because that’s what my aura said. I worried so much that my mom reminded me a few days (or weeks?) later: “You don’t have to do something because someone else said you would. You get to decide.”

So I decided right then that I would not be a writer. A few years later, I covered my bedroom wall with photos of wild animals from San Diego Zoo’s ZooNooz and decided my grand career would be as a photojournalist who travelled the world taking photographs for National Geographic.

When I started college, I signed up for beginning photography classes. But I also snuck a children’s literature class into my schedule, because why not? I loved reading, so I might as well read more books and get college credit for it!

In that class I discovered Lois Lowry’s The Giver, Katherine Patterson’s Bridge to Tarabithia, and Carol Lynch William’s The True Stories of Caitlyn Jackson. I’d read hundreds of books growing up, most importantly every Sweet Valley High and Babysitter’s Club book ever written. But I’d never thought that writing books for kids was something I could do.

The aching feeling of beautiful joy alongside deep sorrow that Jonas’s, Jess’s, and Caitlyn’s stories created unlocked something inside me–and suddenly I wanted to write stories like that. I remembered how much joy I’d felt when writing my own stories in elementary school. My heart didn’t care what my aura did or didn’t “say.” It was telling me to WRITE.

So I enrolled in a Writing for Young Readers class at BYU, taught by the great (and hilarious) Louise Plummer, and then took a picture book class with Utah Picture Book Legend Rick Walton. I learned from both of them that writing and publishing stories was really, truly possible.

I began attending writing conferences, took more classes, and learned all I could about writing kids’ books and publishing. A lot of other things filled my time (see my bio), but twenty+ years later, I’m still attending conferences, taking classes, and learning all I can. And making my heart oh-so-happy by WRITING.