I was alone.
When I was sixteen, reading young adult fantasy, about ghosts and kids with special powers. I would read these in my bedroom alone, and not really tell anyone, because no one really understood.
I was alone.
When I was in third year university, on Wednesday afternoons when I didn't have group meetings, I would sneak off to the Arts building for the Paper's Edge meeting, a creative writing club. I was still so afraid of my love of writing that sometimes I would sit there for the full hour and not contribute, but went just to be in the presence of people who loved the same thing as me. And I continued to love it in secret.
I was alone.
When I began to write my first novel. Even though I had read a million, I had no idea where to start. So I was alone, again, when I walked into a George Brown classroom for the first time, praying that this thing called writing would work out, the thing I had kept bottled up and not really explored yet.
I was alone.
The first time I made a Wattpad account. I secretly made one, didn't even use my own first name, and hid in the shadows until I started posting Kardashian fan fiction. Using a fan fic world that I would consider myself an expert in, I would craft short stories based on real life events in the stars' lives, exploring Wattpad and practicing writing.
And then I got a read. And two reads. And three. And slowly, without really promoting my story, the Wattpad world percolated into mine, and I could see that other people shared the same interests as me. And then before I even showed my writing to friends and family, I got my first comment: "Amazing story." And I wasn't alone anymore.