05/13/2025: Becoming a Writer

Halfway through my senior year of high school,I was set to go to SCAD for graphic design. As I attempted to throw together a portfolio for my scholarship application, though, I realized something important: I kind of hated graphic design. I hated how commercial it was, how complicated Adobe Illustrator is, and most of all, I hated that being a graphic designer meant drawing for the rest of my life. I knew that I could draw, and I had been doing so off and on throughout my entire childhood, but I hated nothing more than being told to draw.

Then began a deep self-reflection. What do I like? What am I good at? What would I be happy doing every day for the rest of my life? 

Not long after I realized that graphic design wouldn’t be the right path for me, I was assigned to read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five for my AP English Literature class.

I’ve always loved reading, but something about Vonnegut’s writing style clicked with me better than any author ever had. As I embarked on the protagonist Billy Pilgrim’s journey from Dresden, Germany, to Ilium, New York, and to the fictional planet of Tralfamadore where humans are placed in zoos by all-knowing aliens, I felt more connected to the novel’s soldiers, extra-terrestrials, and optometrist barbershop quartet than I did to the physical world around me. I felt something I hadn’t recognized before, which was a strange form of envy. I envied Kurt Vonnegut for his ability to bring about such a strong reaction in me when he had been dead for most of my life. I wanted to know how he got so good at telling stories, and I wanted to do it too. Then came another realization: I was going to be a writer.

Read the rest of this post on my Substack! https://open.substack.com/pub/lwollard/p/becoming-a-writer?r=5oiy0n&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web