February 2020 | Clare Henney

The one thing that I always wanted to be since I was a little girl was to be a writer. Specifically, to be an author/novelist. When I was in grade school, I was obsessed with Nancy Drew books and I remember I used to write mystery novels in notebooks back then with a Filipina lead/local version of Nancy Drew. I remember I even wrote in a story where the lead uncovered a major drug smuggling operation. It’s too bad I never kept those notebooks! 

As I got older, I started writing romance stories, again in notebooks. One story that stood out for me was fanfic I wrote about one of my favorite boy band members as a child. I don’t think fanfics were a thing back then, but I was already writing them. Again, this was something that I didn’t keep, which is too bad since I really liked that story. I remember showing it to an older cousin of mine who told me that I really should be a writer.