Courtney Quick

I was born in a military family where moving every year was the norm, and keeping secrets was second nature. Being the child of a parent in the military causes you to either adapt to your constant changing surroundings or fall into a dramatic state where you fight the current. Fighting the current however will only get you so far. I was forced to keep my mouth shut. Everything I did or said would reflect on my father. If I messed up in school, you better believe it was going to get back to his commander. The hardest part of being a military brat, is watching someone you love leave for war. In my pain and confusion I turned to words. I found myself letting all of the pain form itself on the blank sheet of paper. Before my eyes were worlds and characters whose fate I could control. I was the creator. I found myself sharing my secrets through characters. No one knew that this was I, that I was revealing pieces of myself within my creations. Within these tales I was able to let go of the box full of secrets I was forced to conceal.
I realized I was a creator, and this is what I was meant to do. People wanted to see what I wrote; they wanted to find out what happened to the character. Do they die? Do they find love? Most of the time I didn’t know the ending, I just wrote, and wrote until the story ended and it was like watching it come to life before me. I didn’t know what was going to happen until I started it and when it was over I found myself in awe of my creation.

france    women