The first time I remember writing a story I was nine years old. I was at school and oh boy, I hated that school.
It was my last year in that awful place. Because of my bad academic performance (a nine-year-old bad academic performance I must say), Father Oliverio threatened me to stay an extra year to catch up with the curriculum, while the rest of my mates were to go to a different school, with greener spaces, without cassocks and with girls, (legend said that if you were lucky enough, they could even sit beside you in the classroom).
So, I asked if I could write an essay to prove that I learned everything I needed to learn to pass.
They agreed. They lost. That’s the power of storytelling.
I couldn’t write an essay of course (I didn’t know how) but instead, I wrote a three pages story about a little boy who went to the gates of Heaven because he didn’t study enough and Saint Gabriel showed him everything he needed to know to pass the Gates.
Sadly, the following year, no girl sat beside me in the new school, but I sure left the awful one behind.
Stories have different meanings for everyone. My first story pushed me forward to a better present as a kid; the tedious morning masses at church suddenly changed into endless hours at a library and from that day forward my religion became books.
Reading became an essential part of my existence: The Treasure’s Island, Michel Strogoff, Sandokan, Robinson Crusoe and an endless list of adventures filled up my bookcase with books and my soul with storytelling. With the same hunger that my kids today watch «Stranger Things» again and again, I was reading those books repeatedly until I could recite them from memory.
When life was a struggle (and mine sure was) I could get refuge in those stories, in those characters and when my mind started to flow with them I joined them with prequels and sequels in my imagination, I was part of their incredible world so far, far away for the real mine.
It was right there and then when, without even knowing it, I was becoming a storyteller.
I am a Spanish-published author and a Screenwriter who graduated from the University of Chichester in the United Kingdom. I work as a script reader for the Austin Film Festival and the Los Angeles Screenwriting Festival, where I read other writers’ stories and do my best to provide them with helpful and constructed feedback.
And I write.
And I read.
Storytelling is my fuel.
