When I was fourteen or fifteen, I read Eragon by Christopher Paolini for the first time.
While I loved the story and was enthralled with all things dragon for a while, it wasn’t until Eldest came out that I realized that Paolini was being hailed as a prodigy. A homeschool graduate, he’d finished his education at fifteen and started writing the Eragon series which was published through his parents’ indie publishing company. Due to the novel’s growing popularity, Knopf made an offer to pick it and the rest of The Inheritance Cycle up, turning it into the NYT best-selling series we know today.
Which is how it ended up in my hands. I didn’t know any of this other background. But as a teen with a penchant for writing typical teen short stories and poetry, seeing another teen on the back jacket finally made it click for me that I could do this too. I could be an author.
Maybe not that moment (obviously.) But if a fellow homeschool nerd like Paolini could be famous for writing about dragons and elves… I could too.
I had grown up with books in my hands. Reading and writing had been constant in my lives. But as I sat on my bed clutching that paperback to my chest, I felt like I had been given the greatest gift in the world.
Words were my future. And while I waffled on that in the next few years (I had a couple flirtations with music, kinesiology, and marketing), I eventually found my way right to where I knew I should be. At home between the pages.
What’s your writing story? Do you have an author or book that made it click for you that you could be a writer?
