S. R. Laubrea

Oh goodness. For the 12 years I lived with my father, I lived everywhere in the US. More accurately, that's what it felt like to me, being an idiot child at the time. That ended when he dragged me to Alaska when I was 8. The irony, though? He never stopped to address my rampant ADHD. Something that now, as an adult, I despise him for, because being able to focus is vital to achieving your goals. Simultaneously, in the absence of focus, I wound up developing the chaos of creativity, and eventually learned how to give that chaos order; that is to say that all my life, I've lived within my imagination.

There are days I stop to wonder how that actually impacted my ability as a writer. The correct answer is, "Not at all." The right answer is, "She's multi-lingual; she sits down to make words using sounds clipped from languages she's never spoken, implements them in her fiction, and they feel uncannily authentic." Writing is a skill, it's something you do because you have to; written communication is essential. Creativity is not a skill, it's an unessential talent. Not many people have it. I grew up in creativity, yet my skills as an experimental writer aren't the result of it.

A lack of options, initially. Though, in the years since 2010, I've accepted why that's the case for me.