Beautiful Scars [1] ✔

My thank you to you:

Hello, everyone! Many of you who have recently started reading this novel probably have no idea who I am, or the connection I have with my readers, and that is perfectly okay.

My reasoning for writing this is for a bigger purpose. It is to show that I have finally accomplished what i had set out to do with this book, but never did.

I am finally a published author.

Last year, in 2017, I entered an abusive relationship with a guy who didn't care about me whatsoever, and I truly thought he did. I endured so much pain that I became emotionally numb, too numb. I woke up everyday wishing I didn't exist, and I couldn't find any way to get out of that mindset. But then I went to BOOKSAMILLION and got a journal, poured my heart and soul into it, and Shatter was born, unexpectedly.

This book saved my life. It gave me a purpose, gave me reason to live, but more importantly, it is already inspiring others. I posted a video on my personal Facebook profile, and after a week, it has almost 400 views, which is honestly INSANE.

This book, this book is out, released onto the world, ready to inspire others the way that Beautiful Scars once inspired people. At the time of writing Beautiful Scars, I was only fifteen years old, and had no idea so much of an impact would have been made on you guys. Some of you have told me that this book has saved your lives. Others, it made you more appreciative of who you are and what you had to offer to the world. That was always my goal as a writer, and now I can do this on a global scale, as my book is fully released and available on Amazon. This is a novel that has never seen Wattpad, and I don't plan on it ever being released on Wattpad, mainly because this is a book that I feel, is deserving of more. Wattpad is home for me, and it always will be. That is how my writing journey started out, thanks to you guys. You gave me the strength to know my words have power, my words can change and inspire. And that..is all I could ever ask.

My goal for writing can be summed in this post:

For as long as I have been a writer, I have yet to hear the question, "Why?", so I figured I would answer this myself.

Why, such a beautiful word within itself. This one word can mean so many different things because ironically, this word can be applied to any given situation.

Words in general- not just why, can be applied to any given situation. That is one of the main reasons I enjoy them so much, but not the reason why I started writing in the first place.

No, my writing all birthed from a concept called reading. Books were my escape of daily life, because as a child I never fit in. I was seen as the odd child, because the child who would rather read than play or socialize was nothing but a outsider to the others. Conformity is man's best friend, and anything straying from that is seen as unnatural. It seems that, in today's society, and even back then, that being different isn't the route to go. What with my old fashioned beliefs and morals and the such, I fell right into the category of "different."

In elementary school, due to my beliefs and shy persona, I rarely had any friends. Books were my friends. Characters became the only people I felt I could relate to the most. Reading allowed me to drift into a world of my own and forget the troubles of being different and everything that came along with it. See, the book characters didn't torment me the way the other kids did. If anything, I found a little bit of myself in each character, and that alone kept me going, kept me happy, until middle school where I made my own friends.

Though I made friends, the characters were still there, and I couldn't figure out why. I had friends, so why were they still there? As my mind pondered the reasoning, I couldn't help but find myself starting to envy the creators of such beings. How could one person go through all of this effort to make people that didn't even exist so real?

Out of envy, maybe anger, I started to create my own characters through the written word. At first, it became nothing more than a simple hobby that kept my attention.

Then, at age 14, I found Wattpad. Wattpad is a website where authors of any age, any gender, and race, etc. can go to share their work to the world, free of charge. I spent a year reading on there, deciding my work wasn't worthy of publication in any sense of the word, and it stayed that way until a year later. Whenever I turned 15, I had an epiphany of a girl with burn scars who was nothing more than something horrendous to look at, but oh, on the inside, she was glorious. I wrote this from my soul, from my own emotions of insecurity, and had no plans of it going anywhere.

Now, almost four years later, this novel has reached people all over the world, from the United States to the United Kingdom, to Australia to New Zealand, and many other places. With over 200,000 reads within four years, this novel has impacted people from various areas, and I could not be more proud. Although, it is not the reads that changed me.

It is one fan who simply made me realize my potential as a writer, because the one book I wrote simply changed her life. Her name to me is Cat, and my work about a girl with burn scars changed her viewpoint on life, simply because she was a burn scar survivor herself, and this one work made her feel less alone. As soon as she said this, I was reminded of the characters of my childhood, how even them not being real didn't matter to me because they were there whenever I needed them. The characters made life worth living whenever reality didn't. The simple feeling of knowing that I, a mere teenager, changed someone's life the way that other authors changed my life was an exhilarating feeling that I never wanted to let go of.

So, why do I write, you ask?

I write to inspire, to change, to improve, and to create. I write to help the people like I was as a child, and still am today. I write to show the beauty in being different, the beauty in life and all of its crap dealings, and how just a simple viewpoint change, or how someone could be going through what you are going through makes you feel less alone. I write not only for readers, but for myself. Writing helps me deal with my own life experiences, and if I, by whatever means, can help change someone's life, then so be it.

Writing is not a thing, but a gift.

"Anyone can write, but it takes a special kind of mind, special kind of soul to write a work of art. Courage is the absence of fear- and creating your own story and revealing it to the world is the winning battle. It begins with the pen and paper, so go ahead, and write. Your story will never fade, but instead resound out to the world of all its glory." – Katlyn DeRouen