I never set out to become a writer. No, writing feels more like a condition I was born with, a genetic imprint in my cells. In first grade, my teacher had the class write an essay about where we’d be in the year 2000. I wrote that I expected to be in college studying “writing so I can be a writer and write books.” By middle school, I’d pivoted to math and engineering since that seemed much more practical. But then on a whim during my senior year, I joined my high school newspaper. That was the breaking point; I knew then that I’d never escape this affliction. I was going to spend my life pursuing the lonely, thankless work of a writer, and that was that.
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