Perhaps one of my proudest moments in my life came on Christmas Eve 2011. I was dancing around in my living room, waiting for all of my family members to come over and celebrate pre-Christmas festivities with us when the mail came. Our dog, Tiger, went crazy because the mailman is so obviously evil, and my mom handed me a brown package that completely changed my life (sounds dramatic, but hear me out).

That package contained the single most incredible thing that I have ever done in my short life. It was my book. My first book. The one that I wrote with my own two hands and 10 little fingers. It was the one I had worked tirelessly for months on. The one that I played out in my head and planned out in notebooks containing words that nobody knew the meaning of except for me. The words on the pages (all 274 of them) were mine.

It all started with my 7th grade English teacher, Ms. Grech. She is one of my favorite people on this planet, and one of the most vibrant and incredible humans I have ever met. Her kindness and grace are inspirational and uplifting, and she truly, truly cares about her students and their voices.

Ms. Grech introduced me to a website called ywp.nanowrimo.org which essentially allows young writers to do what they do best; create. I set up an account and looked at the rules, which said that writers were to try their darnedest to write a novel that met their word count goal by the end of the month of November, which is, of course, National Novel Writing Month.

If you met your word count goal by the end of the month, you were given a code to self-publish your book and get 5 free copies using a site called CreateSpace. You can also make your book available on Amazon, which I obviously did because, how cool is that?

I had a bit of an edge because I had already started a project that I called "The Baseball Club for Girls", inspired by one of my most favorite movies "A League of Their Own." It was about four girls coming together to create this fearless baseball team in a town where girls weren't allowed to join the boys' league, let alone have one of their very own. As a young girl I had witnessed this all too much and was tired of it. Seriously, how come women aren't a part of the big leagues yet? Anyway, Ms. Grech knew that I was writing and encouraged me to actually finish it and turn it into to something great. I'm so glad she saw that light in me.

The work of art I started in October ended up being finished in the middle of December. I met (and I think exceeded) my word count goal, and was not looking forward to the editing process ahead (I did all of that over Winter break after I had the fine print in my hands). I was so amazed that I had created something so real, that so many people would have the chance to read for themselves.

A few months later, my two best friends and I spoke to elementary schoolers about our writing experiences. Juliet (middle) turned a story we wrote in the fifth grade into a published chapter book and Dominic (right) wrote his own fantasy story that was magical and fun. We all enjoyed the journey together and I was so grateful to share the magic of writing with them. Also, how 2012 do we look in this picture? (#ThoseBangsTho).

Every time I look at this little book, the one that sits on my bookshelf gathering up dust and making memories out of itself, I'm reminded of a happy time in my life when I was able to create something that could live on forever. It's true, it's less than perfect. I'm pretty sure within the first five pages I use the word 'barley' instead of 'barely' because the only editor I had was myself. There are a lot of plot holes, and chapters that were probably unnecessary and added absolutely nothing to the plot. Regardless, it's my favorite thing I've ever done, and it's only the beginning of what's to come. Also, it's made it so that I can use "I wrote a book" as my fun fact for every icebreaker activity ever, so it's a win-win.

Create something great today at nanowrimo.org! If awkward 12 years old me can do it, you can too!