Creating Worlds from Words: The Unremarkable Beginnings of a Writing Life

My freshman English teacher gave us an assignment: write and illustrate a short story with an animal as the main character.

“Use your imagination,” she said.

At home, my parents asked about my day and I mentioned the assignment. Dad stood up from his spot at the kitchen table to imitate his favorite college professor, who would gesture with both hands as if opening to the whole wide world and say, “Let your imagination soar!”

That sounded like an invitation to write epic fantasy or tall tales or outlandish science fiction. I’m afraid my imagination didn’t soar that far or wide.

Finding the Storyline

My story featured a family of displaced ladybugs who had lost their home. Their house had burned down, alluding to the nursery rhyme. In my version, the mom rescues all of her children (not just “Ann,” who crept under the pudding pan), and the story picks up after the fire when they’re searching for a new home.

They interact with the itsy bitsy spider who himself had been displaced by the water coursing down the water spout. And an empty beer can may have been a temporary home base for the bug family, but the rest of the storyline escapes me all these years later.

I drew the ladybugs with markers, hole-punched the pages, cut and colored a cover from the stiff paper that came with my dad’s dry cleaned shirts, and dug around in my dresser drawers for one of my hair ribbons saved from my childhood ponytails. I used that yarn to tie it together.

This “book” looked more like the work of a fourth-grader than a 14-year-old high-schooler, but I was so happy with it, so thrilled, you’d have thought I landed my first book contract.

The teacher propped up all the books on the chalk tray so they leaned against the blackboard during class.

I stared at mine. Gazed at it, satisfied. My yarn-tied ladybug story gave me a taste of writing and publishing.

Creating Worlds from Words

Beyond the assignment, nothing much came from it. We gained no public recognition. I didn’t get a book contract. But I had written my first story and enjoyed the process from start to finish. I created a story that didn’t exist until I put pen to paper.

Writers build worlds with words. Maybe I did let my imagination soar?

When I was thinking back to events that influenced my decision to pursue writing—to be a writer—I thought of this.

I also thought of a poem I wrote about my pony, of my work on the school newspaper, and of the story I wrote as a high school junior and passed around to my friends, who raved about it: “The Medallion of Kilimanjaro.”

Writing, creating worlds from words, felt powerful and empowering…starting with the humble ladybug story tied together with yarn.

The Writing Spark

In her book Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing, Margaret Atwood describes a moment in her high school years when she wrote a poem in her head while walking home from school.

She wrote down the poem, “and after that writing was the only thing I wanted to do. I didn’t know that this poem of mine wasn’t at all good, and if I had known, I probably wouldn’t have cared. It wasn’t the result but the experience that had hooked me: it was the electricity.”(1)

My ladybug story was like Atwood’s poem. The final product didn’t seem to impress anyone but me—my parents didn’t rave about it and I don’t remember my story standing out from others in my classroom.

It was the experience that hooked me. It was the electricity. I felt it when I stared at my creation leaning against the blackboard. I felt it when my friends passed around “The Medallion of Kilimanjaro.” I felt it in college, when my poetry professor complimented the theme of my poem in front of the whole class.

From this unremarkable, unpromising beginning, creativity sparked and electricity surged through me. I resolved to let my imagination soar. I would build a life of words.

Find Your Beginnings

Let’s dig up our early literary and writing experiences—moments and events that led to our yearning to write.

I listed ten writing-related memories that contributed to my writing “origin story,” if you will. As you can see, from that list I chose to write about the thrill of the ladybug story.

Make your list of ten writing-related memories.

Then write one.

You don’t have to publish it, but if you do (on social media, at your website, or on your own Substack), share the link with us.

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1. Atwood, Margaret. Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing. Anchor Books, 2003. (14)