One night, a scene snuck up on me. I imagined a boy running in a marvelous wood all alone. He was twelve (of course, because I was twelve), and he laughed as he ran through the trees. Dappled sunlight fell on him. He reached a place where the woods opened and paused to peek inside.
For some reason this image grabbed me. What if he were a prince? What foe might he face? What sort of hero could he become? What fantastical world might he live in? I desperately wanted to know, but I couldn’t find out… Unless I wrote his story myself.
When I was twelve all I wanted to read were books about fantastical creatures, dragons, swords and castles. I wanted action and a fantasy land to get swept into. I struggled to find what I was looking for in the library. I got frustrated with the cringy juvenile flirting and kissing, the vague endings, the underused powers and the plots that went around in circles. Not to mention the annoying, preachy lessons about not destroying the environment (just saying…). I started daydreaming of writing my own story.
What if I could write a novel with everything I wanted without any of the disappointing things?
As I tell this story, I thought it fitting to quote from Henry And The Chalk Dragon by Jennifer Trafton. Henry Penwhistle is such a relatable character for me. His story is a delightful, humorous romp involving a dragon that comes alive and decides Henry’s art must be shown to the world. It is a story without any of the "disappointing things".
I know I'm not the only one who would sympathize with Henry and I hope this may encourage other writers/artists.
I wrote the scene down to start my Quest.
"Quest. It was probably the best word of all words ever made up. It meant going on a really long journey to find something you want a whole lot."
Well, I wrote a few sentences and stopped. I did more daydreaming than writing. For years I chipped away at the boy's story. I filled the notebook and started a new one. I drew maps and scrawled outlines. I sat in a dark closet and stared at the ceiling agonizing over an ending.
And.... I kept my story hidden from everyone except my mom.
"He and the world had a deal: he would keep away from its silly chatter and its honking horns, its math equations and its shopping malls, its confusing rules, and its laughing faces. And in return, the world would keep out of his bedroom.
For in this room, behind this door, lay a deeper magic and a wilder story than the world had ever seen. Or ever would see - as long as the door stayed shut."
Despite the slow pace I grew more attached. I heard authors encourage young writers. I watched writers' workshops. I determined to finish the quest and maybe... just maybe, someday someone would publish it.
I moved from writing in a notebook to typing on the computer and my story took jumps forward.
I discovered something important. Dragons. The boy's quest needed dragons! They were the key to finding the end.
I set a deadline and was determined to finish the Quest. No. Matter. What.
I wrote The End for the first time. It felt amazing. I had written a novel! I had found out what the boy’s adventure was. The quest was over.
Or was it...? I had a messy first draft. The story was dear to my heart, but I couldn't share it with anyone. It had to be perfect for that.
"But what if he let it come to school with him? If his dragon got loose, it would be like everyone seeing his sketchbook. Worse: all of his wonderful creations would be tromping out freely in the world, for everyone to point at and laugh at and say, “What a weirdo that Henry Penwhistle is! Can you believe he drew that?”
I realized that what I thought was the end was only the beginning. Real authors wrote several drafts. I would revise and rewrite! I reached my senior year in high school and set out to complete the second draft before I graduated. Then I would have it published.
When I was on the verge of completing the boy's story for the second time, I joined the Young Writers Workshop. It opened an entirely new world to me.
I learned many things about publishing The first being, I couldn’t publish the first story I wrote. It got worse after that. I discovered that I couldn’t publish a book I had yet to receive feedback on and I also couldn’t publish a book without marketing, platform building and social skills. My hopes of publishing were dashed to bits.
“The world doesn’t care about your art, Henry. The world will laugh and turn away. The world only cares about facts and numbers and budgets.”
I'd almost rather face a dragon than platform build. Shudder. It made me want to hide in the woods and never come out. I didn’t have what it took. I was doomed forever and so were the boy and the dragons.
"People are the bad kind of scary, he thought. Dragons can only eat you, but people can laugh at you, and that is like being chewed to death by a smile."
Amid writerly despair, I slogged to the finish of the second draft. But still, it had plot holes galore. I still couldn’t share it with anyone let alone publish it.
I abandoned the boy and the dragons. I stopped writing.
But after a break, just for fun, I started another story. Suddenly I realized that, at some point, I had fallen in love, not just with the boy's story but with writing. I couldn’t halt just because I might never get published.
“You have to be brave to be an artist.” Mr. Bruce smiled and nodded at Henry’s sketchbook. “It takes a fearless knight to imagine something and then let it out into the world. You never know what might happen to it. You never know what you might discover. Don’t be scared! Go make something new!”
I soaked up everything I could about writing and publishing. I pushed hard and completed two stories in less than half a year. I mustered the courage to join a critique group and started sharing small sections of the boy's story. I got helpful feedback. My writing improved. Hope renewed.
"You have to be brave to be an artist, but you also have to be patient."
I knew I had to step into the terrifying part. The "platform building". Shudder.
Manage a massive social media platform? Not happening. Start an email list? Too scary. Start a blog... Well, that sounded boring. Why spend time writing and sharing posts about my life? Because, frankly, who cares?
But many of the writers I knew had blogs...
"Principal Bunk’s sad voice floated back into Henry’s mind, and he shouted at the dragon, “The world doesn’t care about you. The world will laugh at you. The world only cares about facts and numbers and budgets.” The cauliflower’s string broke, and the dragon tumbled to the floor. But that’s not true, Henry thought suddenly. Oscar cares. My parents care. The bus driver cares. He remembered Jade’s poetry echoing in his chest and her glittery finger pointing at him in the library. Jade cares."
So I started this "Hannah Joy's Commonplace" and unwittingly started an email list as well (wix has a two-for-one thingy). As painful as it was, I wrote things and shared them. And not just with my mom or my critique group but with anyone who might want to read them. It opened the door a crack wider and more writing seeped out into the world.
“Once you make something,” continued Bruce, “a picture, or a story, or a song, or an invention, or even a delicious meal, it isn’t yours anymore. It has a life. It could spend its life lying quietly on your paper, staring up at you and saying, ‘thank you for drawing me. Aren’t I wonderful?’ Or it could fill the stomach of a queen or give strength to a poor man in the street. It could wrap itself around a city and make people in it cry an ocean, or it could wiggle into the ears of a baby and make her burst into giggles.”
I returned to the caged dragons to write a final draft, print copies and give them to a few friends. More and more the dragons took over the boy's story. The first scene that grabbed me was replaced with a new one.
A mom from church asked to read about them and I shared my progress with her. She read it aloud to her little boy and he liked it!
"He was always afraid people would laugh at his drawings. But now everyone was laughing because of his drawing, and that was different. That made him glow colors inside as if a sunset was buried in his bones."
Soon the dragons would soar free and my quest would end in a small, but happy way. With a blog and some printed copies.
But then I ran into someone's elbow.
The problem with severe concussions is that they take a long time to heal. So again I laid the story aside. The poor dragons clawed at the cage bars for ages while the boy gave up hope of ever completing his quest. I wondered if it was over for good.
But...I gradually recovered. And… started writing a little here and a little there, in a notebook. Bumblediah Nimbly emerged. As soon I finished with tiny tweaks and dread in my heart, I read the story aloud to my mom and sisters. They enthusiastically drew pictures and my mom made blackberry tea (Bumblediah’s favorite). It warmed my heart. I was ready to start again.
Now, for the dragons!
I met a friend who put books on Amazon. She insisted I do the same. You can automatically publish a book on Amazon free of charge, but Amazon won't edit or market it. You can write a bunch of gibberish, throw it on Amazon and have a “published” novel.
I had abandoned this idea early on. If I were to be published I wanted to publish for real. No short-cuts.
“Henry, let your imagination be as wild as the spinning universe. Let it be beautiful and adventurous and even terrifying. Let it go free. Don’t be afraid. But remember that art does things you don’t expect. Remember that it can hurt people, but remember that it can make them happy as well. Remember that it can break things and stomp on things sometimes, and that’s where chivalry comes in."
But I had seen people do it well. What if I gave self-publishing my best whack? What if I settled for something more scary and less safe than simply printing copies?
“I told you not to keep all of that imagination hidden. It’s time to open the door and let it out!”
All of his creations, all of his shapes and imaginings, roaming free for everyone to see? It was terrifying. And yet there was his army of knights, looking at him as if he were a superhero with a magic pencil - as if he could save the world just by drawing it."
I had dragons roaring for freedom, the boy begging for an end and readers asking to meet them all. It was past time. I agreed to do what my friend asked.
"Before, the adventure with the dragon was like a balloon bobbing at the end of a string in Henry’s hand, trying to break out of his grasp. After this moment, the string came loose, and Henry realized he had never known - indeed, no one at La Muncha Elementary School had ever known - just how wildly an imagination can fly when it has broken free. Perhaps the Bored Members were wise to take away door knobs. For it is a dangerous thing to open a door."
In 2025 I will release the dragons into the world and see what happens next. They might end up on Amazon or maybe somewhere else.
“All you can do is make the best thing you can, and love it as hard as you can, and let it go loose in the world, and watch what happens.”
I need help and that’s where you, dear reader, come in. I am looking for some adventurers to join me on this quest. If you haven’t already joined my email list, I would like to invite you to. If you have, then I may have some tasks for you shortly...
Would you help me release these dragons? I don’t know what kind of havoc they’ll cause, I don’t know where they’ll end up, but I do know that it will be a wild and wondrous adventure.