My writing life commenced before I could technically write. 

There I sat—the backseat of a rental car—pointing at the world outside the window with my then-tiny fingers and persistently questioning about anything and everything that caught my attention. By the age of six, I had had the fortune of seeing various parts of China, South Korea, Australia, and the U.S. While cultural and social differences fascinated me the most, the vast majority of mundane objects would also pique my interest. Consequently, I soon earned myself the nickname of “100,000 questions.” 

Those probably proved to be a bit much for my young, though extremely patient, parents. The most effective strategy to halt my relentless flow of questions, albeit temporarily, turned out to be story-telling.

Mesmerized by the new world that each fictional character opened up for me, I would in turn switch from my inquisitive mode to pensive mode. Soon enough, I was creating my own stories. This marked the beginning of my curious relationship with blank paper. On those paper, some conveniently placed by my bed, I would doodle for hours and hours nonstop, until I was ready to gather my thoughts and orally share them with others for feedback. My mother, realizing that I had not learned to write yet, dutifully captured those fleeting moments by writing down my stories and poems verbatim, so that a more mature, more critical, yet equally story-loving me could one day revisit them.

Ever since then, I have derived the greatest pleasure in life from seeking my own sources of inspiration and turning them into story materials. Upgrading doodles to written words was an empowering coming-of-age moment that rivaled my self-hosted ceremony where I nostalgically bid all of my nursing bottles a fond adieu. As a child, I was quite introverted, partly due to my multi-dialectal upbringing that demanded constant and seamless transitioning between Mandarin and southern Chinese dialects. By visually representing limitless possibilities, the blank pages in front of me felt liberating. As soon as I learned how to write, I embraced complete autonomy over the way in which I would fill the blank pages, heart pounding. Along this process, I was able to find my own voice and strengthen it with more confidence.

Years flew by quickly. Although my love for stories is still at the core of it all, I grew such passion into a broader eagerness to understand, and to experience firsthand, the process of creation at large. I learned to read closely, and write in a way that communicates my passions with others in a logical (if not also contagious) fashion. Journalism and freelance writing became my favorite ways of sharing the information I have garnered from interviews, observations, and intensive research to a wider audience. I learned to express ideas in different languages. I learned to dissect books, paragraphs, sentences, phrases, and syllables, and later piece them all together to comprehensively appreciate the power of words—written and spoken alike, before editing others’ work and my own critically.

My relationship with blank sheets of paper, meanwhile, has complicated. The more I read, reflect, write, and edit, the more unforgiving my standard for myself has become. During my college career, I began to devote an increasingly significant amount of time staring at blank Word documents, obsessively trying to find that“perfect” opening. Watching the cursor blink at the exact same spot can be frustrating, especially given my earlier tendency to fill in blank pages with free-flowing, passionate words.

This almost-paralyzing brand of perfectionism challenged my long-standing love of blank paper and brought me to phases of realization that climaxed when I was learning intensively from Hong Kong barrister Laurence Li. Mr. Li shared what was for me an initially painful conclusion, “you are too good of a student: one who thinks too comprehensively about everything when the world does not operate that way.” Evidently, my thirst for filling up blank pages was hindering precise thinking to a certain degree. This first exposure to the legal profession wowed me and, in retrospect, injected a renewed sense of excitement about blank paper: this time equipping me with courage to justify spending all the energy mapping out my arguments precisely and selectively before I avidly fill up the pages. While I strive to preserve comprehensive thinking and creative brainstorming where appropriate, I have managed to abandon certain ideas and words to tailor arguments with greater precision. It is a similar mindset that has guided me to better the editing process for my work and the law journal’s alike, where I take pride in track changes-filled pages—products of precise thinking I admire.

As I continue my writing life, I look forward to turning to a new blank page, where I would zealously welcome prospects of further enriching such writing life.