Jodi Picoult

My Story

     Reading has always played an important role in my life. My childhood was rough, to put it mildly. I never stayed in one place very long and struggled to make friends. The one thing I did have was my books. I was always nose deep in a book, learning about the world and falling in love with the characters. When I was placed in foster care books helped me escape from my grim reality. I remember getting a copy of Elephant Run by Roland Smith and reading that book near 20 times. I’d get done with it and flip to the first page to read it again. Each time something new would stand out. To this day I still have that same copy in all its frailed page glory.

     Naturally, this love for reading evolved into a need for writing, and when I was adopted my new parents gifted me plenty of pencils and notebooks. My first taste of writing was in the 6th grade, we had to write everyday for 15 minutes. I wrote a short story over the course of that year called Enemy Ace, a spy thriller that followed the main character Jack as he had to escape a mysterious government agency.

     My teacher at the time, Mrs. Yost was always very encouraging of my writing and would often share my work with the rest of the class. This gave me a confidence boost to start writing more and hone my craft as well as promising myself to become an author. 

    Throughout middle school I carried a journal, which I wrote in everyday. Often choosing to write over paying attention in class. I would write mostly poems and short stories revolving around horror as at the time Creepypasta was really popular. Toward the end of my Middle School career, I entered a poetry competition. The winner would get to read their poem to a crowd and have it displayed at our small-town museum. My poem was about skateboarding as in the early 2000s I was high on Avril Lavgine and Tony Hawk. 

     I would go on to win the competition in my category and get my poem published. Though it was a small time achievement and ultimately very few people will see it. It gave me such a thrill and a sense of pride. A feeling I would find myself chasing in high-school.

     Freshman year of high school came and I was in full nerd mode, LOTR, Star Wars, World of Warcraft and would create maps on the web or hand draw them. The following years I stopped writing all together, and preferred to get lost in movies and video games. 

     All that changed however Junior year, when I took a creative writing elective under my English teacher at the time Mr. Spence. This was also the time I started running my LARP group and made a world for that called Zelderon. So I used my LARP World as a base and began to write the foundation that would later become The Chronicles of Dranik.

     As LARP grew and my ideas grew with it. I started to flesh out the world's history, breaking it down into periods of 1,000 years which I called Ages. Making gods, cities, towns, empires, new races, and languages and changing the world name to Dranik, all for LARP.

      The more work I put into the LARP world the more people got interested in the lore. So I made more and worked on it again and kept adding until finally, it was 50 pages full of lore and history all for LARP.

     Senior year LARP was going great and I came off of various awards and statewide recognition. I was also still taking a creative writing class with Mr. Spence as well as a science fiction writing class with Mr. Schoenborn. It was during this time  I decided to turn my short story into a full-on book. I used my LARP world as the setting for which my work would take place. Wanting to explore more aspects and points in the world's history that I wasn't able to do in LARP. However, my grades started to slip and I was forced to put my writing on hold and focus more on school.

     It wasn't until after I graduated and 2 years after that when I picked the story back up again. I was at a low point in my life, no job and little friends, I wanted something to focus on again. And so I worked for 2 months and cranked out the pages that are now The Chronicles of Dranik: Resurgence, Rise of The King. This not only brought me out of my slump but rekindled my love for writing and reading.