I was listening to this week’s First Draft podcast, in which the host Sarah Enni interviews author Emily X.R. Pan. It is a good interview anyway, but at the beginning, she talks about how she learned to tell stories through practicing with her father when she was a child. First, he told her stories, and then he started asking her to tell stories, and they would collaborate together.

This was an epiphany for me, even if it’s a really obvious one. I realized that, usually when I hear about writers and how they always naturally told stories, I think, “I didn’t do that, so maybe I’m not supposed to be a novelist.”

In fact, I specifically remember the one time I ever was asked to write a story. I did it like I do everything else – at the last minute, late at night. I think I was 8, but this procrastination thing is really ingrained. I didn’t really know how to do it, and so I worried about it and avoided it, and then it wasn’t very good. My story is lame, and I have always known that. I am sure my grade was fine, but I wasn’t proud of that work.

So I loved hearing Emily X.R. Pan tell how she learned to tell stories, not in a one-off assignment randomly, but over time, gradually, and in a trusting and open environment. And I didn’t have that. And that’s totally fine – it just means I didn’t practice it. But it was also a bit liberating because it also means that I am not necessarily bad at it. Maybe I just didn’t get trained.

So that’s what I’m doing now – training myself to tell stories, to write this novel.

I love simple, obvious epiphanies that hit you at just the right time.