I must have been seven—maybe eight—years old at the time. I was visiting my godmother’s house, something that should’ve been just another day in the countless that had passed before. A day to be lost to the passage of time, supplanted by the countless others that would come afterwards. But then there was her daughter, sitting at a computer, typing furiously and paying no attention to her guests.

“What are you doing?” I asked, innocently.
She finally looked toward me. “I’m writing a story,” she answered.

Four simple words. I didn’t know it at the time, but those words would come to define the rest of my life. Because after she said them, I knew what I wanted to do: I was going to create my own stories too.

I don’t remember the exact moment I first put pen to paper. It couldn’t have been long after that fateful afternoon. But eight-year-old me had decided that he would try his hand at crafting his own tale. A tale starring himself naturally because what eight-year-old boy—with an overactive imagination to boot—doesn’t cast himself as the lead in a grand adventure?

There’s not much I recall about that first story. I do remember writing it on loose-leaf binder paper, stored neatly in an actual binder. It was just north of a hundred pages long, all painstakingly written in print. At lunchtime in school, I would commit pen to paper almost every day, eager to return to the story that I was in. The plot of that story has long since been lost to memory, though honestly, I probably didn’t know what a “plot” even was back then. Ironically, I did know it needed a sequel. Which I never wrote.

Perhaps if that had been my only formative experience with storytelling, I might have quit long ago. Just another passing fad, like so many I’d pick up over the years and decades to come.

But then came the game Final Fantasy X.

Now, I love video games. Especially single-player games that take you to far-off worlds and let you experience the journey of the characters. I didn’t have a console of my own growing up, but my older cousin did, and he played all the Final Fantasy games that came out on the PlayStation. I was content just watching him, captivated by the stories that unfolded.

Fast forward a couple of years—when I finally got my very own console, the PlayStation 2 (PS2)—and one of the first games I picked up was Final Fantasy X. For those unfamiliar, it’s a role-playing game (RPG) and the first Final Fantasy title released for the PS2. It was also the first in the series to feature full voice acting. I spent hours on that game—hundreds of hours, actually.

It took me over 200 hours to beat it. Not because it was hard, but because I had become so engrossed in that world that I didn’t want to leave (though I was also leveling up to absolutely crush the final boss.). When the final scene arrived—when Yuna (one of the main characters) said, “Never forget them,” and the credits began rolling to the song Suteki Da Ne—I was emotionally laid bare. A whirlwind of emotions surged through me as I sat watching name after name scroll down the screen. When it ended, I walked up to my room and thought to myself, “What was the point of living anymore? I just experienced the most beautiful story ever told. Nothing’s going to beat that.”

Was that melodramatic? Absolutely. Especially coming from a barely pubescent boy.

But that feeling never left me. And to this day, I still think it’s the most beautiful story ever told (though a few others have come close).

So what does an RPG have to do with writing? Simple: I want to give that feeling I had experienced back to people. Perhaps they’ll never feel it as strongly as I did at the end of Final Fantasy X but I want people to read my work and experience the full gamut of human emotion. I want people to cry, to laugh, to feel joy, love, happiness and a sense of inspiration. I want to give people the greatest adventure that they’ll experience. And then, when that final period comes and the last page reached, I want them to experience just a tad of lingering emotion as the characters that they had come to know for hundreds pages end their respective journey.

Would I love to support myself through writing? Of course. Isn’t that the dream of most, if not all, writers? But that’s not the only reason.

There’s a scene at the end of the movie Moneyball where Billy Beane is considering a job offer from the Boston Red Sox—one that would make him the highest-paid general manager in sports. Pete, the assistant GM, tells him: “It’s not about the money. It’s about what the money represents. It says you’re worth it.”

That’s how I view my art. I would love to make the bestseller list one day. I’d love to be able to live off my writing. But it’s not about the money. It’s about the idea that enough people liked my work. That it mattered to them.

So if you made it this far, thank you. I hope I’ve convinced at least a few of you to take a chance on an indie author who’s just trying to tell good stories about people overcoming extraordinary odds.

And if that sounds like your cup of tea, consider signing up for my newsletter. I promise you’ll get one email a month. Two if I’m feeling especially productive.