About Me

I gave up on writing in sixth grade.

​

When my elementary school sponsored a statewide writing contest, I knew I’d win.

​

By 11 years old, I already lived as a writer: half of me existed in the blue-water-green-grass world; the other half transformed into a vengeful fairy one hour, an orphaned schoolgirl the next, a trained resistance fighter by nightfall.

​

A contest would just make it official.

​

​​​​If this were a book, I’d have won.

​

​​​But I didn’t.​​​

​

​​​If this were a book, I’d have come back fighting.

​

​​​But I didn’t.​

​

​Rejection stung, and I stopped writing.

 

Or, more accurately, I stopped putting my writing out there. Admittedly, this sounds thin-skinned and dramatic. But I was 11. Hurt feels huge at 11 (or any age, really).

​

​​​I grew up and eventually became a middle school literacy teacher and library storytime presenter, dealing in stories but not creating them.

​

​​​But...it’s hard to cut out an inner writer. Snippets of imagined conversation played in my ears. Images flitted through my mind. Characters curled up on my shoulder, asking to stay awhile. ​

​

For years I scrawled ideas on the end pages of used notebooks…and waited. For what, though?

​

​I naively assumed someone would come along, christen me a writer, and then I’d be off, spinning my scattered thoughts into stories. 

​

​​​I was wrong.

 

Outside validation doesn’t make you a writer. ​​​You write because creation outlasts rejection. You write because fiction reveals fact. You write because words are a second layer of oxygen in a thin world.

​

​You christen yourself.

​

​​My name is Jenny Reuel, and I’m a writer.

​

​No contest needed.