What if Summer Never Ended?

And a voice was found.

What if Summer Never Ended. This is the prompt I followed about two years ago, for a writing contest. I have a written the short story I'm the most proud of, following a very rational yet exaggerated consequence of climate change. The idea is simple: every single building in a small village is destroyed, leaving people stranded in the wild, forced to reinvent the way they live.

I can’t fully express how transformative writing that story was for me. There’s something singular about the pride you feel when you’re truly happy with what you wrote. That pride is rare, and I think that’s because the act of writing is so lonely. You don’t always get readers. You rarely get feedback. And most of what you write, truthfully, doesn’t deserve to be remembered. But to feel the warmth of being glad to have written this particular story is a feeling I with to every writer out there.

The writing of this particular story wasn't transformative because of the theme nor the reception. It was because it's when I realized I found my voice. I have found the way I wanted to write. I saw, for the first time ever, the amount of poetry I wanted to add, the way I wanted to describe people and emotions. It felt like me. It also resembled authors whom I didn't know were role models for me until I had finished this particular story.

I don’t have many convictions in life. I doubt, a lot. If you’ve read my articles, you know I joke often about the frequency of my existential crises. But there’s one thing I know now with certainty: when I walk into a library, I know which shelves hide the authors who paint the world like I see it.

I truly hope you find yours too.