If at first you don’t succeed, try dragons.
I started and quit Eragon at least twice before it sucked me in and shifted my travel ambitions, career goals, and general lack of enthusiasm for the school library. Growing up, I was never short on imagination and creativity. The backyard was my Narnia wardrobe, transforming me into a cowgirl or superhero or four-legged creature. But I wasn’t much of a reader until 6th grade when I performed the worst of my friend group on a reading exam. Humiliated and determined, I marched down to the school library and pulled a stack of books off of the shelf. I’d tried them before: the first few of the Harry Potter series, The Warrior Heir, and Eragon.
Eragon, the largest of my selection, failed to grip me in previous attempts, but a friend insisted I’d love the book. And I needed to redeem myself from that test score. So I started turning pages. And turning pages. And turning pages.
Yes, the beginning was still — for me — a slog. But at the first appearance of a dragon I was hooked, and by the time I’d finished the story, I was knee deep in the language index in the back of the text, rereading my favorite chapters, longing with fingers crossed for a sequel.
I don’t recall any parts of the story that caused my life to pivot, but before long I was looking up facts about how the book came to be. How the magical land of Alagaesia was largely based on Montana, which quickly became a bucket-list travel destination. How much of the book was inspired by Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings. How the author, Christopher Paolini, began writing the work at 15 and self- published at 19 before he received a formal book deal.
“I can do this,” I thought too proudly. A few days later I was writing my first “novel” in a pair of composition notebooks. Two years later I finished my first National Novel Writing Month, seven years later I became an English major.
I’m not an author, but I am a writer. Something about the rugged-edged pages between the thick blue covers of the dragon book summoned that out of me. Something I would have missed without a little “failure,” a push from a friend, and a few restarts.
