139. How I became an essay titan after being Tinker bell.

Celebrate yourself and your achievements.

Jun 03, 2024

When I was a child I had a green Tinker bell diary that I’d keep safe with one of those tiny, silver, universal locks and I kept the key hidden under my mattress. As a teenager most of my thoughts were kept in the notes app on my iPhone or in random notebooks but I always preferred to write on my phone because it felt more intimate and the texts felt perishable. If you wanted to get into my notes, you had to get past me and then my passcode, whereas with my Tinker bell diary you could pull on the lock and it would open, almost like winking at you saying “abracadabra” because of the irony of the safety lock.

I never shared my writing with anyone because I never considered myself to be an artist, a creative person or a writer. Words were just the easiest way to get my thoughts and feelings out of my mind and body, that was their only function. Many years later, I started to write long captions on a private Instagram account telling stories and Mamá would read them and call me to say how much she loved them. I think she was my first ever “fan” apart from my boyfriend, who is always my number one fan no matter what I do. She repeated time and time again that I had a gift for writing and I used to thank her for the love and support, but I’d quickly discard the idea of having any type of flair for writing. I can still remember her saying that I used words everybody could understand and was able to paint pictures in her mind while she was reading. The latter made me happy because being able to produce images in another’s mind is magic to me.

However, none of it was ever enough for me to call myself a writer. I saw all writers as authors and believed that they were the titans that ruled the world. People that came from another planet or dimension. People that were able to sit for days, weeks and months in front of a blank page and create worlds and characters by linking words together. Casting spells on others’ lives, sometimes changing them forever after meeting a character or being led down streets and villages in made-up lands. I wasn’t a writer. I was the same person that would write in her Tinker bell diary, I was no titan… Until I realised that this is essay number 139, which means that I’ve been writing for one hundred and thirty nine weeks non stop. Me, who’s not exactly the example of consistency, has shown up week after week and written an essay no matter the weather.

“You can write an essay about it. But how do I write an essay? I proceed to Google: “what is an essay and how do I write one?” But how complicated, I don’t know how to write essays.”

I found this note on my iPhone a few days ago and took a screenshot because I thought that it was funny how much things have changed since then. I didn’t know what an essay was on the 15th July in 2020 and I firmly state in the last sentence “I don’t know how to write essays” and yet here we are.

POMELO didn’t exist back then and neither did Emily as a writer. I was no titan and felt more like Tinker bell herself casting words onto the green pages of her diary with a magic wand. Small and insignificant. Too tiny to even be real. But this is the story of someone who grew into a titan because of a hum in her bones.

I used to refer to my essays as “pomelos” because that way I could avoid the more real, literary word. It was a way of staying safe, of feeling like I wasn’t playing in the same league as better writers. I wasn’t writing personal essays, I was writing pomelos, so it was all just fun and games. After writing a lot of pomelos, I started to receive more and more subscribers and comments from total strangers telling me how much they loved what I wrote. I’d scream in excitement but deep down always feel like they were mistaken. I’m that same Tinker bell girlie, remember? How could they feel all of those things from something I’d written? It felt like a dream that was too good to be true.

Time went on and I continued to achieve big things and I finally began to believe it. It gave me strength and courage to keep going. I opened up, dove down deep to write honest stories and whenever I was scared to hit “publish” because it felt too personal or like it would lack importance for other people, I’d get showered in even more love than usual. All of these signs felt like green lights from the Universe guiding me like a north star. I had no idea where I was heading but I trusted that I was on the right path.

When I first started writing for POMELO, not many people paid much attention and some people didn’t understand why I was so fixated on the idea of writing. I wasn’t earning any money from it and it wasn’t my job so it all was seen as a bit pointless. But I know that nothing else in the world makes me feel as me as I do when I’m writing. I feel whole and like I’m doing what I came here to do. It feels natural and even though it made no sense to other people, for me it was always my priority.

Three years later, here we are: Essay number 139 and almost 700 subscribers later. All because I trusted my gut and trusted that the hum in my bones was a trustworthy sign to follow. If I can reach the heights I’ve reached, it’s simply because I believed in myself, I put in the effort and I took every single tiny win as a massive one and felt the deepest gratitude I could for each of my achievements. I became a titan by working hard and learning how to become a better writer week after week. I’m not yet where I’d like to be regarding writing, but I’m a hell of a lot closer than I was 139 weeks ago.