Guest post written by author Melissa Yi
Melissa Yi is an emergency and inpatient physician who steals time away from medicine and her family to write her critically-acclaimed Hope Sze medical crime series. Melissa’s stories have been longlisted for the Staunch Prize (best international feminist thriller) and finalists for the CWC/Arthur Ellis Award (best crime story in Canada) and the Derringer Award (best crime story in the English language). Under the name Melissa Yuan-Innes, she writes award-winning fantasy and science fiction, poetry, and non-fiction.
You can find Melissa on Twitter, Facebook, Bookbub, Goodreads, YouTube, Instagram, Amazon, and Pinterest. If you sign up to Melissa’s newsletter on her website, you’ll receive a free novella!
I’m thrilled to be part of The Nerd Daily, for I am a nerd every day!
Do I read? Check.
Do I wear glasses? Check.
Do I love school? Check.
All these things conspired to make me extremely popular at school dances … if we were on Nerd Planet!
Luckily, I didn’t need to be popular. I had my imaginary worlds created by books. I don’t remember not being able to read. My parents used to drive my brother to tae kwon do lessons and drop me off at the library. Three times a week, I would hang out with my best friends who made out of paper and ink, who told me the best stories, never bored me, and never betrayed me.
However, librarians would occasionally shake their heads and cluck their tongues at my book choices once I moved on from kids’ books. Eventually they spoke to my parents, who gave permission to have the J (for juvenile) clipped out of my library card. This meant that I could read all the books, but I remember the shame.
When my family moved from Canada to Germany when I was ten years old, it cut off my steady diet of English books. I was forced to rely solely on the school library. They had quite a few books, but librarians continued to comment on my reading. “How many books do you read a day, Melissa?”
“I don’t know, three?”
“Three!” They’d stare at each other in amazement.
Not to bash librarians, since I think the school might have partly relied on parental volunteers in the library, but I don’t miss the heavy judgement that comes with being a kid who doesn’t fit the mold. I was the freak who loved to read.
This was before e-books. I would’ve cut off my hair for the right to read privately through pixels. This would also have saved me a lot of late and lost book fees. Still, I love paper and ink books too.
I became a writer because I love to read so much … and because I was starved for books. I teamed up with another friend, Kirsten Wills, who also had ink running through her veins, and we wrote and wrote and wrote.
Then my family moved back from Frankfurt to the outskirts of Ottawa, Canada, before I started grade 8. My former friends picked on me. I was a nerd, a geek, a loser, “bag lady,” “battle ax,” and whatever else. But having moved from a much bigger city back to this tiny suburb, I mostly stared at them and waited to graduate from the hell of middle school.
Graduation came. Other girls wore fancy dresses and did their hair. I borrowed my mother’s black velvet dress and shook my head when classmate after classmate wept over leaving. One of my previous friends, who’d teased me the most mercilessly, was heading to Europe with her family. I wondered if her classmates treat her well as she’d treated me, but never bothered to find out.
I had better things to do. In September, I headed for high school along with 2000 other students, where I was mostly free to learn and and read speak my mind. There would still be embarrassment and futile crushes and lots of lonely Friday and Saturday nights, but I joined the concert band, tried jazz dance, and landed a part in the high school musical. I met the boy I would eventually marry. And after high school, I’d start writing fiction again with encouragement from him.
If I could go back to my 13-year-old self, I would tell her that our lives would end up pretty sweet. We’d become an emergency doctor, make good friends, marry the cute guy from grade nine science, and eventually write award-winning fiction in everything from fantasy and science fiction to mystery.
Because the fact of the matter is, most nerds are smart and compassionate. Imagine peaking in high school. No thanks!
Play the long game, work on your brain, take care of your body, and explore the world through the page and in real life.
Win!
