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I think of my memories as a movie timeline that keeps going and going and going. Every day is a small frame in the long movie. Of course I won’t remember every single frame, but the big scenes, the big memories in life, I’ll remember well, and occasionally I rewind my mind back to think about them. 

Some of the earliest memories I rewind back to is of Younger Me imagining stories up in my head, and writing little comics and stories on paper, just to tell to myself as if I had written a book. 

Oh goodness did I love reading (and I still do!). It could have stemmed from Mom buying me books to read to her aloud as a child but I absolutely loved reading. Books were like movies that played out in my head, but the characters could look the way I wanted them to look, or have the voice I wanted them to have. That’s when I decided, I want to make stories too! I wanna make characters and worlds and adventures they can go on as well! So even as a kid, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I just had to become one! 

I started to put aside time at home where I would spend an hour or two a day at the computer, working on novels I wanted to write. I wrote down information about publishing books and how to make good stories. I used to draw pictures of my characters, and draw pictures of my book’s future front covers, imagining what it would be like to have a published book. I made writing my life I tell you. 


My parents were thankfully very encouraging to my goal. My mother gave me her blogging website where I could write about anything I chose. Younger Me was so happy and excited to find out when people from Brazil or Australia were giving my health-benefit articles a read. 

And my Dad introduced me to a crypto-blogging site called Steemit, where I began to write tiny stories that would earn me currency in return. (That's how I ended up here on Hive folks!)

And then one day, after weeks of drawing, pushing myself and editing like mad, I published *[Imagination](https://www.amazon.com/Imagination-Shila-Williams-ebook/dp/B09YXKWZJX/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1LGHJMFIU6S8J&keywords=shila+williams&qid=1672762312&sprefix=%2Caps%2C140&sr=8-1)*, a children’s book written and illustrated by yours truly! 

I was so happy, and so proud! But I am still and forever grateful to my Dad, who pushed me to live out my dream of publishing a book. 

But I found that, after years of telling myself I was a writer, writing books wasn’t all I wanted to do. I wanted to write movies too, like the movies that would play out in my head when I wrote. I also loved art, and thought back gratefully at the mini-comics and front covers I would make for my books when I was little. I thought about all the voices I gave book characters in my head, and how I loved making voices for characters. I found out that I didn’t want my whole life to be only about writing. But, I had already found out I was a writer, right? That was what I was good at, so shouldn’t I stick to it?

That’s when I told my Dad, and Dad told me that no one is a one-trick pony. He told me my life hasn’t even begun! That I could be so many different things. That my life wasn’t about just being a writer.

I found that since getting that advice, my life feels like it’s been opened up, and that my options aren’t limited to anything. I can be like a shape-shifter in movies, who looks like one thing at a moment, and something completely different the next. So you see, I can shift from writer to artist, as I’ve already illustrated before. And I can go from artist to screenwriter (which is the script writer for movies if you didn’t know). And I can go from screenwriter to voice-actor, or anything else I’d like to become! Now I know that my life is going to be much bigger than writing. I’ll mentally shape-shift to whatever I want to do with my life. The possibilities are truly endless. 

***
**Want to actually check out my book Imagination?** Check it out on Amazon [**here**](https://www.amazon.com/Imagination-Shila-Williams-ebook/dp/B09YXKWZJX/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1LGHJMFIU6S8J&keywords=shila+williams&qid=1672762312&sprefix=%2Caps%2C140&sr=8-1)!

**I also write on Wattpad!:**  https://www.wattpad.com/user/restcity
**And read.cash:** https://read.cash/@restcity