A Future of One’s Own

You enter a room with an objective in mind. Laptop firming pressed in between chest and bicep and fingers beginning to thrill as you eagerly embark on the next To Kill a Mockingbird revelation. Glasses on, documents begin to generate and… you stop. Think. Comprehend the notion that somewhere deep in the bowels of the internet is your fantasy, written and published before you can even type ‘Chapter 1’. This brings you to the thought that the most indispensable component you need to write with is originality.
Will ideas ever become extinct?

The environment we have created for ourselves have driven us so far and so dramatically to the point where we are able to contribute any plot we can imagine, fiction or nonfiction, and compress it into 280 characters. Suddenly, like the chill of an icy wind, you electrify yourself to this concept and start to forage google for your concept. You type ‘Time travel stories’, scroll and there it was in about 136,000,000 results was at number 8 ‘Highway to The Past’ by Stephen Wagner written in 2018.

You were a year too late.

In that moment, your confidence descends by a mile. How are you supposed to keep producing your fiction when you feel like the world has already beaten you to it? You label at number 2 that confidence is key. You feel so updated in this media driven world that there may as well be no point in writing because the anonymous typers have now administered how they truly feel about, well everything.

Resting your hand on the top of your laptop screen, it slowly begins to falls out of site until you refrain for a moment. You are in the same boat as everyone else willing to transform into the next JK Rowling. They are all voluntary putting their thoughts out there for nations to judge. Okay, some fail, some fall through and some will miss the brief completely… but you’ve just got to know what works and what doesn’t.

The laptop flipped open nearly uncontrollably and get each thing primed and fixed for writing. The cursor beaten with anticipation.

34 drafts, 183 edits and 729 positive comments to 37 negative comments later, you come to the extent of your writing journey with nowhere else to turn. And there you have it. All you need is belief in yourself and a unique viewpoint on life. How did you end up, I hear you ask? Well, fulfilI your story and you’ll discover the truth.

At that instant, your eyes begin to wander the room infixed in finding an idea as refreshing as a cool breeze from an oncoming train. This takes you approximately 38 minutes until you arrive at the debate with yourself whether or not the theory of how the world would be if there were things that had never been invented would be a bestseller. Thereupon you focus on themes like language, time, oxygen, schools, gravity…Tomorrow?

Katie Martin
16 years old
The Weald Sixth Form, Billingshurst, West Sussex