From the beginning of time, I never knew I was meant to be a writer. I never knew I would spend my coming-of-age years writing stories one after another. I never knew that twelve years after I turned ten years old, I would be a Featured author on Wattpad and moving towards publishing my first book. Thinking back to those early years, I now know the history behind my journey and how I became Viktoria Fyodorova.

My early days were slow, because I did not have many friends. However, I always had an enormous imagination. It showed whenever I would have friends over, and we would play acting games together. Since I was a shy child, I spent a lot of time creating stories in my head: starting with my stuffed animals and then moving into acting. As a little girl, I was considered “odd”, because I always avoided crowds and played acting games off to the side. Nevertheless, I did not know these were early signs of who I would grow up to be.

In 3rd grade, I wrote my first short story, Lilly and the Three Puppies. It was based off one of my favorite Disney Princess games for the GameBoy Advanced, Royal Adventure. It was an assignment for my class. Our teacher wanted us to exercise and improve our writing abilities, so she asked us to write a small story.

Even after I wrote Lilly and the Three Puppies, I still had yet to feel the spark with writing. That changed a little later in the year, when I started to write Pokémon comics. Pokémon was my past, present, and future during my childhood. A lot of games I played with my stuffed animals were Pokémon games. I never knew just how far comic writing could go until I reached 4th grade.

I remember it perfectly. Mom picked me up from school one day, and she took me to a hair stylist so she could get her hair done. I sat in the lobby, with my legs waving back and forth under me, extremely bored. Finally fed up, I went to Mom and started to annoy her—by tapping her shoulder repeatedly.

“I’m bored,” I complained in that soft, high-pitched, ten-year-old voice.

Mom pushed my hand away and said, “Why don’t you write something in your school journal?”

I took her words into consideration. I had nothing else to do, so why not? I sauntered out to the parking lot and came within reach of the gray minivan. With the rays of the sun warming my back, I reached inside and pulled out my school notebook. I took it into the barber shop and returned to the chair in the lobby. With pencil and notebook in hand, I started to write my first official story—a Pokémon fanfic called Mystery of Time and Space.

I don’t know what happened that day. Something triggered my creative writing genes. Was it the plot I came up? The characters? I just don’t know.

I continued Mystery of Time and Space through the rest of 4th grade and into early 5th grade. My 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Gower, was so impressed to see me writing every single day after the Barber Shop Incident. By the time I finished the story, it was ninety-six pages long. From that day forth, my writing career kicked off.

Dad got me my very first notebook in 5th grade. With it, I started my first series, Maglin Arts High, which ended up being ninety stories. 5th grade was when I started to read my stories to my dad. All my iconic characters were born during that time: including John the Red-Crowned Crane, Prince Benjamin, and Anthony Mateo Brook (The Green Guardian). His original name was Jack.

Aside from Maglin Arts High, I also wrote a lot of Star Wars and Pokémon fanfiction—including horrible crossovers—in that first notebook. It wasn’t until 6th grade that I moved away from fanfiction and focused thoroughly on the Maglin Arts High series. They continued into 7th grade.

In that gap, I started to make PowerPoint presentations, to keep up with each story, and add soundtracks to them, since I had just gotten my first iPod. I also designed my first Fantasy maps: one for Pinta Country (Maglin Arts High’s location) and Loonier Country (the country where John the Red-Crowned Crane came from). Fun fact: Pinta Country was originally called Cantaloupe Kingdom, but I changed it when I reached middle school.

Halfway through 7th grade, I started a new series, Heroic Dimension (twenty stories in total). It was about a boy named Tate Phoenix, who went to a heroic boarding school called Heroic Dimension. It followed the legend of a great knight known as Sir Emmanuel, whom I created in early 8th grade. I wrote a prequel story about him and was invited to share it during my school’s talent show. I do not remember the show that much, but I do know that after it, I started to write more original stories.

Through the Wormhole, my first Science Fiction piece, came in 8th grade, right after I finished Heroic Dimension and learned about geologic time. I was so fascinated by the subject that I re-read the chapter in the textbook multiple times.

One afternoon after school, my best friend and I sat down in the computer lab and outlined the basic plot for Through the Wormhole. Just like me, my friend also loved the topic, but she knew I was the writer—that I would be the one to write the story. It was she who came up with the idea for Through the Wormhole’s protagonist, Daniel Matton, to travel through a wormhole in order to go time traveling.

I told my friend I wanted to write a time traveling story, but I also wanted to put a different twist on it. She was the one who created that twist. At the end of 8th grade, I had written the first draft of Through the Wormhole, but I still craved to learn more about geologic time.

In 9th grade, I wrote my first novel, Metamorphosis. I got in trouble for staying up late writing my stories, and my parents took away my computer. However, they could never pull me away from writing; I loved it too much. I still had my notebooks.

I dug one out from downstairs and wrote the first draft of both Metamorphosis and my first werewolf story, All For One. Metamorphosis was the one I enjoyed immensely, so it was the one I spent most of my energy on. By the middle of 9th grade, I finished Metamorphosis. It took up 128 pages in my notebook, making it my longest story yet.

After Metamorphosis, I moved away from Fantasy for a bit and wrote my first Realistic Fiction piece, Bittersweet (originally known as The Dreaded Miracles).

In 9th grade, I was introduced to my favorite band, Three Days Grace. They inspired me to write a story about a young man who was abused as a child. To overcome his dark past, he started a band known as The Dreaded Miracles, meaning there are “still miracles waiting for you, even if you have lived a dreaded life”.

The idea of the band did not come from just Three Days Grace, though; it also came when I learned that my cousin created his own band called The Blind Spots. They visited my family in the summertime, and I was allowed to spend one whole day with them! I learned so much about band culture, and I even got to ride in their van! That was when The Dreaded Miracles really kicked off and got its current name, Bittersweet. The band loved the story so much that for a while after that special day, I shared the story’s progress back and forth with them.

10th grade was my golden age of writing. I wrote all my best stories during that time, including a whole new draft of Metamorphosis (which ended up being six-hundred pages long) and Through the Wormhole (which was four-hundred pages). 10th grade was when my stories started to become longer and more complex, since I was growing up a little. It was also when I started to hurt my characters.

In 10th grade, I had my first ambulance ride, after suffering an anaphylactic reaction from a pill I was taking to treat my acne. When I got out of the hospital, I started back with writing, but I ended up hurting my characters more frequently. So, if anyone was curious on where my love to hurt characters came from, it was when I had that reaction.

My two main projects in 10th grade were Through the Wormhole and Metamorphosis. In my Web Design class, our teacher asked us to create a website based on real estate. Since I was working on Through the Wormhole, I came up with something creative. I decided to have Dan never make it back to his own time period. Instead, he got trapped in modern day and became a real estate agent for futuristic homes.

My teacher hooted when he saw that. He loved the concept so much that he even asked if he could read Through the Wormhole. I gave him the first part of the story.

In 10th grade, I really thought I would become a paleontologist, because of how much I knew about geologic time, due to all the research I had to do for Through the Wormhole. I then had to remind myself that I had another story I was working on. So, back to Metamorphosis I went.

As I continued with Metamorphosis, I fell in love with it, especially Tracey, the male protagonist in the story. There were so many ideas swirling through my brain that I turned the book into a tetralogy (a series of four novels). I put together soundtracks for every single story in the series. I listened to them while I wrote them. That was the start of music-making for me and knowing what songs best fit the tone of my books.

Metamorphosis continued into 11th and 12th grade when I wrote Metamorphosis 2: The Curse of Poseidon and Metamorphosis 3: The Lost World of Fairies. It wasn’t until Metamorphosis 3 and 4 that I started to explore Tracey’s background more. The third story was when I came up with the term “claxton”. As soon as I made Tracey one, he instantly became my favorite character, and I started to write spin-off stories about him.

12th grade was when I started to get back into fanfiction, because I was introduced to the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy. For a while in 12th grade, I returned to my Star Wars fanfics, beginning with Rey’s Inner Power, which I wrote for my 12th grade Creative Writing class. I had an urge to start sharing my stories with other people besides my dad, so I read the story in front of the class.

My 12th grade writing teacher was fantastic. She gave me extra time to complete my stories for her class, even the first draft of Dragon: Myth of the Bermuda Triangle, which was originally known as The Beast of the Bermuda Triangle.

At the end of 11th grade, my mom and I went on a five-day cruise to The Bahamas. Since I always had my notebook with me wherever I went, I started to jot down ideas for a story based on the Bermuda Triangle. We briefly passed through it on the cruise, which I thought was the coolest thing ever. Twas, The Beast of the Bermuda Triangle was born.

Moving into college, I continued to write—more so re-writes of old stories rather than original ones in the first year. Since I was still living at home, I continued to share my stories with my dad and family. The first year of college was when my younger brother started mentioning possibly getting my stories out in the world more. I had so many stories under my belt, but I had no idea what to do with them.

August 19th, 2019 was when I started posting my stories online. Fanfiction.net was first, then Archive of our Own, and then Quotev. I started a new draft of Through the Wormhole. It was one of the first stories I posted on Wattpad—in September 2019. I was also working on a few more Star Wars fanfictions, but then I stumbled upon Dragons: Race to the Edge and BBC’s Merlin. Those shows captivated me. Therefore, two more fanfictions were born in 2019: The Death Lion and The Light Dragon (now The Prism of All Dragons).

I entered my first Wattpad contest in October 2019 with Through the Wormhole and won 3rd place. I’ll never forget the day I found out I won. I burst out crying. My boyfriend thought something was wrong with me.

Besides Through the Wormhole, I also started a new draft of The Beast of the Bermuda Triangle. It got its new name, Dragon: Myth of the Bermuda Triangle, and won me my first 1st place award on Wattpad with the Platinum Awards. I was so happy that I started to enter more contests. My confidence skyrocketed, since I now had proof I was improving as a writer. I thought nothing could get in the way of my growing career.

When COVID-19 hit in 2020, I went on a writing rampage, now that I was stuck at home a lot. I think it’s safe to say that 2020 was my second golden age of writing. I started taking more writing classes at my college, including a few writing workshops. I became more involved on Wattpad and Quotev and started to write novellas. Early 2020 was when I began to re-write All For One, which is now Illusion: The Mural of King Arthur. I kept the second draft on Quotev for a while, and then I moved it over to Wattpad when the 3rd draft came into play. These re-writes led to the birth of my most popular story, The Green Guardian.

I wrote The Green Guardian in six months. That was the fastest I ever wrote a story. I started it February 2nd, 2021 and finished it August 10th, 2021, one week before my older brother’s unfortunate death.

I was so excited to give him The Green Guardian as a birthday present when he moved in with me. Unfortunately, that never happened. I never got to see the joy on my brother’s face when he learned I wrote a story about him. That was what I was most looking forward to. His death crushed me to the point that I stopped writing for a whole semester. However, that didn’t mean I didn’t continue to enter The Green Guardian in awards on Wattpad and start applying for it to get featured. It was all in the name of my older brother—to share his story with the world. I knew that was what he wanted me to do.

My parents told me to not let my brother’s death take away my writing. They did not want to see a huge chunk of my personality gone. They did not want to mentally lose another child.

For the longest time during the Fall 2021 semester, I did not think I would ever return to writing, but then, Spring 2022 came. I switched my Major to English and was put into a capstone writing class (an advanced Fiction Writing class). That capstone re-ignited my passion for writing.

The first story I wrote after my brother’s death was Evangeline’s Flame. Because I had not written in a while, I had no idea what I wanted to write about. However, I needed something for my class. Therefore, I pulled out a prompt book called The Genre Writer's Book of Prompt and Story Ideas. After a few days of searching, I found the prompt that changed everything: “A hunting expedition goes awry when its organizer reveals they are hunting a mythological beast”. Boom! Here came Evangeline’s Flame.

I felt like a newborn person. There was the spark I lost when my brother died. I started A Frosty Christmas and returned to my other stories. I even wrote a spin-off story for Through the Wormhole called Messummer, as the second story for my capstone. With the help of my friend, Shreya, I posted my stories on a few other websites: Booksie, Scribble Hub, and DeviantArt.

I’ve amazed myself by how I bounced back after such a devastating loss. Of course, I also remember that I kept reminding myself during my whole hiatus that I was a writer way before my brother died. I couldn’t let that change me.

My parents believed in me, and I’m so glad they did. Now, here I am, writing again and applying to become a Wattpad Ambassador. The Green Guardian has won over 100 awards, and I now have this wonderful anthology of my old stories. My career has been one, big, coming-of-age adventure that, like anything, has had its ups and downs.

This book shows me just how much I love to write and how far I can go. It also proves that it is possible to bounce back when your life changes forever. I’m keeping Matthew’s memory alive, by continuing to be the writer I was born to be—the writer he knew would go far.

Matthew, you are the man who made me Viktoria Fyodorova, and I want to thank you for that.