[Writing] on the Wind by Meghan Waldron

My best friend Anna and I stood at the window of my dorm room, near midnight, watching the mostly-empty street below us. Cars drove by; some flipped their hazards on in parking spots to pick up take-out. We watched a skater trying to land flips on their skateboard, and we watched their friend try to help them. We talked about everything and nothing for a while, but the wind was brought up the most: it had grown stronger throughout the evening. It creaked through the building and whistled through my now-broken window seals. It was the strongest wind I had witnessed in a long time. Across the street, three flags whipped around their bending flagpoles. (If the flagpoles were moving, it was definitely too windy and cold for me to go out.)

A square of cardboard from a pizza box blew in from a side street to the street directly in front of us. The wind dragged it along the ground and tossed it around, like a graceless bird. And then the cardboard’s companion joined it: a more fragile piece of paper, torn slightly in the middle. It danced with the cardboard. Soon, the cardboard disappeared down the street, and the paper ripped in half—but continued dancing. And then the cardboard came back. (Why was I cheering for a floating, air-blown pizza box?)

I didn’t sleep that night. The wind kept me up. It reminded me of my Red Fred Project book, Running on the Wind. The main character, Cassidy, grows up under a rock and never learns to fly, so she becomes a great runner, instead. One friend competes against her, another friend mocks their running interests. Eventually, the friends discover Cassidy’s secret, so they offer to teach her how to fly. “It’s just like running on the wind, Cassidy.” But their coaching doesn’t stick.

It’s only when the wind blows Cassidy off a bridge that she’s forced to trust her instincts to “run on the wind” in order to keep herself alive. Coincidentally, it’s at that moment she learns how to fly!

This section of the story reminded me: sometimes when we’re blown off our feet, we don’t know where the (metaphorical) wind will take us, but it will get us *there* eventually.

I also started thinking of the lyrics “all my words come back to me / in shades of mediocrity” from Simon and Garfunkel’s Homeward Bound. “In shades of mediocrity” could mean more than just in the region of mediocre, I think it could extend into the realm of greatness, too. When our words and actions come back to us, we usually think of karma getting us back for a wrong we did. But our words and actions can also come back for something good we did—they can have a ripple effect, too, like the pizza paper, splitting in two and two and two to travel farther than we initially planned.

For me, writing is my second voice. I don’t usually think much about the writing that I’ve put out into the world, whether it be for a school assignment or a bigger project, or something I’ve published. Writing is just something I need to do, the same way people who own cars need to refill the gas tank or recharge the battery, in order to keep going. This isn’t me asking for compliments, but I don’t tend to notice that my writing is actually something worth reading until someone tells me wow, Meghan, this is really good, or Meghan, this made me cry or please submit this. It’s then I think maybe there is a reason why I want to do this for a living. By doing this seemingly necessary action of writing, it’s all come back to me in ways that fifteen-year-old me, who had just been pitched the idea of co-writing a children’s book, could never have imagined.

A year or so after Running on the Wind was published, I wrote a short sequel for one of my English classes. I saved it for a couple of years, waiting to find the place to put it. I submitted the first half of it as part of my college essay, and I’d like to think the way I ended it—on a cliffhanger—is the reason Emerson accepted me. Later that same year, Salt Lake City’s premiere modern dance company, Ririe-Woodbury, adapted my book into a dance performance. In a similar fashion that Peter Jackson read The Lord of the Rings and adapted it into a film, someone associated with the Company envisioned my book as a movement performance. (I’m still astounded when I think about it.) And here I am, nearly five years after publishing, after years of vaguely knowing that I want to work with kids and also write books and also be some sort of teacher, working for the very organization that published my first book. Your actions will come back to you. Your voice, meaningless as it seems in the moment, can have a profound impact—not only in your life but in others too.

This is why I think fiction will never die. Stories separated from one’s own reality are infinitely as important as any other. Someone will treasure your words and hold onto them. Someone will hear what you say and feel comforted because.

Write your words. Let them get blown around like empty pizza boxes. Let the wind carry them back to you and ripple out into the world at the same time. Then run on the wind, knowing it will always take you in the right direction.