The first time I remember I wrote a story I was nine years old. I was at school.
I hated that school.
It was my last year in that awful place and because of my bad academic performance (a nine-year-old bad academic performance) they threaten 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, without walls, without cassocks and with girls, (legend said they might could even sit besides you if you were lucky).
So I asked if i could write an essay to prove that I learned everything that I needed to learn.
They agreed. They lost. That’s the power of storytelling.
I couldn’t write an essay, obviously I didn’t know how, but 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 besides me in the new school, but I sure left the awful one behind.
Stories have different meaning and different use for everyone. My first story pushed me forward to a better present as a kid; the church switched into 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 adventure’s book filled up my bookcase and my soul. As 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 surely 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 graduated by the Chichester University in the UK.
