Writing was not an easy task for me growing up. I started writing for the first time at the age of four, when my parents enrolled me in kindergarten, in Greece. I can still remember writing my name for the first time as well as my teacher’s reaction as I was picking up the pencil with my left hand because I was the only left-handed in the class. I probably inherited that from my father. Being left-handed is considered to be a gift nowadays, but back in my father’s early childhood, they had a completely different view on left-handed people. I can still remember the stories he once told me. Being left-handed was different and different meant odd, and unnatural. Whenever he used his left hand to write, the teachers would slap his hand with a ruler, and command him to switch hands. Ever since he trained himself to write with his right hand. Even nowadays, he uses his right hand more than his primary one. Imagine how these views can also change the way we interact with the world, like language for example. Humans came up with the word “right” to describe a situation as correct, valid. Humans have been using words like “mankind” when describing humankind. So, it is clear to me that the views of the people can shape the way we communicate as well.
In later years, my parents could see me struggling to read and write properly. While reading, I would skip lines, misspell words and even forget to use diacritics. So my parents decided to find out what was wrong and sent me to a psychologist to test me. As it turns out, I was diagnosed with dyslexia, which not only affected my reading and my writing skills but also my way of thinking. After I was diagnosed, I have been attending meetings with a psychologist for two years. She helped me with my homework as well as improve as a writer and understand how my mind works. Even though this disorder affected my performance in school, I tried not to view it as a disadvantage. On the contrary, I considered it as an opportunity for me to improve myself even more as a writer.
Over the years, writing became my main way of communication. As an introvert, I would barely talk. I was the silent person in every group. Since I started communicating, I was not a very talkative kid, and that didn’t improve. I was that shy boy, who wouldn’t raise his hand in class, and who would prefer to express his feelings over a text message or a piece of paper because he was afraid of human interaction. As a result, writing made me feel more comfortable and free because I didn’t have to interact with other people. It also gave me time to organize my thoughts in order to create a more detailed and meaningful message.
At the Age of fifteen, I realized how much I loved writing. I was never much of a reader, but the movies I watched and the video games I played growing up were enough to convince me that creating worlds was my thing. And what is a better way than writing to do this? All I needed was a story, a pen and a blank piece of paper. I was not spending much time on homework at home, but I would gladly spend hours creating ideas in my mind so that I could give them life.
Later the same year, I started writing a personal diary, recording all my dreams and ideas, which I thought would help me create new stories. One day I created an alphabet using odd symbols as substitutes of the Greek alphabet, in order to communicate safely with my friends in class. All these experiences made me love not only the process of writing but also the structure of the language itself.
I was always into fantasy, mystery, horror stories. As a result, most of the stories I have written are based on dreams I had in the past, including nightmares, or other books like the series of “Harry Potter” from J. K. Rowling and “Lord of the rings” from J. R. R. Tolkien. Furthermore, books from other important figures of horror stories, authors like Stephen King and H. P. Lovecraft were great influences. Being a fan of J. R. R. Tolkien, I was impressed not only by the story but also by the idea of creating a new language within the story. So I decided to give it a try and create my own language in one of my stories. Admittedly, my imagination played an important role in creating stories and languages, but most of my stories and languages are incomplete, as I realized it takes a lot of research in history and I need to study a lot more about how languages are created in order to understand how a language is properly structured. Not to mention how the background of the story can affect the way a language can evolve over time.
Nowadays, my goal as a writer is to enable myself to express my thoughts in the best and most colorful way possible, so that the readers can picture exactly what I have in my mind. I will also try to enlighten myself with knowledge about linguistics as well as read more books that can help me gather useful information that can help me create my own worlds.
