Community High School alumnus, Brigit Young, is pursuing her passion of writing in New York. She has mainly written short stories, but her first novel is soon to be published in the spring of 2018.

Her book is called, “A Thousand Words”, and it’s about a young girl in seventh grade who was disfigured in a car accident when she was very young, when her dad was driving. She’s very retreated inside herself, and has become a very withdrawn person,  but she finds expression through her camera; she loves her camera. She becomes kind of a school detective with her photography, she documents the school’s life and is able to uncover mysteries, “She becomes kind of like Harriet the Spy” Young said. One day a boy comes up to her who’s very popular and gregarious, quite the opposite of her; he tells her that he has a secret, and that his father had left home. He has to find him, so the two of them go off to find out why his dad left home.

Young has always wanted to write about kids, and she wanted to make the main character in her story a bit different, someone who’s differently bodied or abled. She also connected to a personal thing about herself when she was writing this book.

“I actually have had terrible chronic pain my whole life, and I feel like I’ve never read about a character for young people that feels physical pain all the time.” Young said. “I wanted to put that concept into the book.”

She somewhat based this character off of herself. And this book was, in a way, an outlet for her feelings. “I kind of think every character is based off yourself because you’re putting parts of yourself into it,” Young said. “She’s kind of the the shy part of myself, which isn’t always the first person people meet, but I connected to that side of myself. Certainly, her chronic pain she deals with is directly me, and it was therapeutic writing it. I felt I could really complain, and let all my feelings out.”

Young definitely likes to write realistic fiction, when she used to write for just herself it was a lot darker. Her novel that’s coming out doesn’t have that same darkness, because it’s for kids, but it’s definitely a more somber story. She’s aiming towards an audience of people around the age of twelve, with hopes that they can relate to the book. “I’ve written books that I can never finish for young adults, and I hope that one day I can write for older kids. It’s hard though because you’re writing for like twelve year olds and you want to use curse words, and you want to be a little more real but you have to watch it more than if you were writing for fifteen and sixteen year olds.”

Her first and main inspiration was Tracy Anderson, Community High School teacher. Young took the english class Pop Lit with Anderson, and it changed her whole perspective of writing.

“It blew my mind because it was a teacher saying you can read and write what you want, and the creativity and expression that comes from that is profound. Oung said. “You spend so much of your academic life having things like very strictly dictated to you, and Tracy didn’t do that. That was special.”

Anderson herself gave her the confidence that she’s a good writer, and that she should keep writing. She still remembers to this day what influence Tracy had on her career.

“She read things that I wrote and gave me such positive feedback. There was none of this trying to break me down in order to teach me something, everything she taught me was by pointing out something I did well, or giving compliments, and giving me strength to believe that I can write. I did a lot of other things before I became a writer professionally. But when I really discovered that writing is how I can make my living, and writing is what I would do, it was so funny, I thought of Tracy immediately, like in those moments. I felt like I would never even believe that I had talent if I hadn’t had Tracy giving such positive feedback.”

One thing that Tracy said to Young was, “Brigit you need to write every day, even if you’re going to school for something else, or whatever you’re doing, write every day,” and that stuck with her, and she still thinks about that to this day.

She had always liked to write, ever since she was a little kid, but she had originally wanted to be an actress. However, Tracy really sparked her interest in writing, and to this day Young feels she wouldn’t be where she is now if it weren’t for Tracy.

“There are a lot of things that lead you somewhere, and I do think we have these guideposts, and I would say she’s a guidepost.”

She started her writing career by writing about a hard time she was going through, and channeling her feelings. That was a really big sign for her that she should continue writing.

“I had a really bad breakup with this jerk when I was an actress in New York, and I got so depressed, I just started writing about it. I just wanted to keep writing and writing,  and that was actually the first thing that I ever got published. I do write a lot to express my feelings, and to deal with hard times” Young said.