Welcome to my writing blog!! I’ve always thought of blogging as a writer’s best form of therapy—it’s basically free, requires no human interaction, and makes that stream of consciousness FLOW.

Here begins our journey, where we’ll explore what’s inside the folds of my brain (in a not gross way) AND stroll together through a ✨ magical ✨ land.

SO…why writing? Why did I choose such a dubious art form? Why not pottery or trombone-playing? Or dog food tasting (yes, it’s a real thing)?

My writing journey began where all Gen-Z writing journeys begin…on page one of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. If this book series brings to mind nerdy middle schoolers who wear orange shirts every day and pretend one of their parents is a Greek god, then you’re absolutely correct. And if that reference is too niche, I’m putting you on the series right now 😍. Percy Jackson showed me that writing can put a chokehold on your thoughts, hobbies, and enjoyment of life as a whole. Everywhere I went, I was thinking about these characters and their stories. I aspired to be as courageous and intelligent as the people on the page. I was so in love with the story, I wore a neon FLUORESCENT orange hoodie every. Single. Day. Without fail. No one in their right mind dons such an abrasive color DAILY. Yuck. Clearly, I was utterly enchanted. I hope no one unearths those terrible fourth-grade pictures of me in that Camp Half-Blood hoodie.

Fortunately, my hyper fixation amounted to more than regret over an elementary school phase. From Percy Jackson was born my OBSESSION with reading. I could only reread the same series so many times, and I grew hungry for more content. The young adult genre was especially appealing to me, and I immersed myself fully in the Barnes & Noble YA Culture™. My reading eventually branched off into classic literature, which began with Pride and Prejudice (of all places to start in the classics, you can never go wrong with an Austen work).

Of course, each genre boasts a life-changing book, and the classics were no exception. Put your hands together for the next book series that changed my life…

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

DUN DUN DUN.

Technically, I read The Chronicles of Narnia in first grade. I will be the first to admit that I had no idea what was going on in first grade. So I read it again in high school. Narnia is a masterpiece (I will fight you on this). There’s a common thread in these stories that’s utterly, unexplainably captivating. Also, a rare occasion where the movies were GREAT (and not just because Ben Barnes is Prince Caspian, though that certainly helps).

In the midst of all that reading, I thought I’d try my hand at writing. And yes, this writing manifested in the F-word…fanfiction. Before you click off this blog and never come back (because OMG someone said the F-word), fanfiction is not just One Direction and Harry Potter fantasies. It’s in the word. Fans of fiction who write fiction.

I can confidently say that the terrible stories I wrote were the keys to unlocking both my growth and passion for writing. I remember writing them on my small computer, printing them out (and consequently wasting truckloads of ink), coloring my own cover, and crudely stapling it all together. I would shove those elementary manuscripts in my parents’ faces and implore them to read it: PLEASE PRAISE ME FOR MY BAD WRITING MOTHER AND FATHER MUAHAHAHAHA.

So that’s the cycle. Reading, then writing. Then reading some more, and then writing a lot more. Pretty soon, that cycle led me to start writing original stories. I still have many old drafts saved in my Google Docs. There’s no feeling like rereading an old manuscript, one that your middle school mind thought was the next Harry Potter (though the writing was, truthfully, garbage). None of my old stories were ever completed.

Until I had an idea about a Persian queen named Esther.

The story of Queen Esther first stirred my heart in seventh grade. I had a vague understanding of her significance to Jewish culture, but I wanted to dig deeper. My seventh and eighth grade years were spent doing WAY too much research on her history and the ancient Persian Empire. I wrote a couple chapters of the story, but it was only a few pages. It wasn’t meant to go anywhere beyond my Google Docs library.

But now that story idea is a book called For Such A Time As This (shameless plug alert).

The great thing about any creative journey is that it never ends. There’s always space for improvement, even in your strongest abilities, and it’s the most gratifying process. All the sacrifices you make along the way are simply steps to that glorious end of progress.

As a P.S. (since I don’t know how to end a blog post), I would like to clear my name from the Grammar Police hit-list: all of my tags are basically “itsabigailhopekim”…with no apostrophe after the t. Consider the intentional whoopsie an attempt at humor 🤡. A little bit of irony, if you will. I promise I passed first-grade grammar (or did I….🧐).