Even in my early youth, I wrote. I had my parents buy me journals. I had my sisters gift me notebooks. I had taken the old empty books no one else wrote in and made it my mission to fill their blank pages myself. And throughout the perhaps dozens, if not hundreds, of notebooks I had acquired for school and personal use, only one had ever been filled. And this occurred just towards the end of the seventh grade. After filling my first notebook to the brim with doodles, movie fanfic, and ideas, I took a break from spending other people’s money on pages that would mostly remain blank. However, that didn’t last long, as during my final summer break before I entered high school, I acquired another journal, one that called out to me with its soft, flexible cover, lined paper, and empty sleeves. Bringing it back home was another magical and daunting experience, as the thought of what to fill this empty world consumed me. However, thanks to a certain YouTuber I came across by pure chance, I decided to fill the pages of this empty world with her words. I played, and paused, and repeated each video this woman had to say about writing. The do’s and don’ts, the should and could, the keep going and dial back.  Of course, being a high school student at the time gave me little desire to write a story of my own, much less a truly inspired and original idea since my own world was still too small for my tastes at the time. It continued to be that way for four years until I arrived at college.

Being the envious and petty high schooler I was, making sure to tell everyone just how big and great I’d be at this A-List school no one else in my class would get into, definitely ensured Karma would come and drop me at a community college most everyone in my class was bound to go to. The first day was a real low point for me as I began to drift between passions that first year, but as I got better at understanding the college learning cycle, I rediscovered myself as I did the available courses list. Seeing that creative writing course lit the flame within me again. Learning from an actual writer, in person and not through a screen, kept that flame lit for the next two years. Safe to say I really botched my first year of college, and so I had some major catching up to do if I wanted to realize my dreams of becoming a successful writer. The first step: transfer to a university like I was meant to attend the first time around.

Even though I did manage to get accepted into a top writing university state school, the question “what kind of writer do I want to be?” sprang up that incoming summer. I’d read romance, written erotica, explored horror, imagined mystery, and so much more, but being able to say my speciality, much less have a focus genre, meant the world to me for some reason. Like if I was a med student relentlessly changing their speciality as if that would prevent them from studying or practicing other fields. Nevertheless, I continued to have the question rattle my brain for weeks until I opened my phone and, for the first time, binged anime straight from the crunchy source.

For some more weeks I explored all the series there, all the series I’d seen clips of on YouTube and other mediums. It would be that way for quite some time before I considered just typing up “writer” in the search box. And while most were not available in English dub, I did see this one series that I clicked on on a whim.

The opening to A Sister’s All You Need immediately caught me completely off guard and almost led to me logging off out of pure shame. If not out of curiosity and other emotions, I wouldn’t have stuck through to see how “wholesome” the single-season series was. I was also distraught by how it was a single-season series. Thankfully, the anime was an adaptation of only a portion of the complete fourteen-volume light novel series. Making that discovery is what set me on the path to becoming a light novelist.

The world does say books make the best teacher, and the author of the series, Yomi Hirasaka, was most definitely that to me. Immersing me in a world of light novelists traversing the industry they love and hate while illustrating the romantic entanglements that come with the territory. All while using comedy and some highly inspired writing techniques I aim to incorporate into my own work. Never had I enjoyed my time with a mentor such as them, but never will I let my admiration for them stop me from succeeding them as I perfect a light novel of my own.

And so I say with utmost genuine love, “Let’s keep going, aspiring novelists!"