TILSON’S TOUCHING TALE LEAD STORY IN CHICKEN SOUP FOR TEENAGE SOUL

Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com

GRAVENHURST — They say write what you know.

Julia Tilson knows pain.

“I had a lot of pain in my teenage years.”

Not just the mental or emotional kind many kids suffer.

But physical pain. The near-death experience kind.

A brain bleed in public school left the then 10-year-old in a coma for 11 days in 2006.

That’s been followed by 15 years of on-and-off surgeries that aren’t done yet. She’s going back for another this month.

But she’s OK. She and her mom, Johanna, run a small home day-care out on Doe Lake Road in Gravenhurst, where Julia loves to read to her charges — and write.

The caregivers consider themselves “essential workers” for the frontline health-care workers whose kids they nurture in nature.

So you’d think in a short life her quiver would be filled with enough harrowing tales of hospitals to fill the quill of a Grey’s Anatomy writer.

However, faced at first with fact or fiction, Tilson chose the latter as her way to escape the hurt of her real world.

Her fantasy island was reading and writing “high fantasy.”

“Magic and witchcraft — it’s part of my soul.”

Not that she isn’t “grief-stricken” by the real world news that the Arthur series is ending.

Tilson has written at least three books (more than 100,000 words) that she’s trying to get someone to publish.

But as with many young female writers it’s her passionate, formative years — which not only created the most copy for her pre-teen diaries and teenage journals — that are now crafting her maturing adult writing style.

A besotted teen crushed when her decade-long “friendship” with Jacob turned out to be just that is the first paying gig for writer Tilson — $200 US.

A Best Friend Crush is the lead short story in the 25^th anniversary anthology edition of Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul.

It’s a collection of the best of the old and new stories that reflect classic and contemporary times in the lives of kids, who co-publisher Amy Newmark says really aren’t that much different today.

Newmark says Tilson’s tale is as “relatable” in 2021 as it would have been when the aspiring writer was born along with the first edition of Teenage Soul.

As a teen Tilson received an award from Girlz Unplugged for her “resiliency and determination.”

“I’ve gone though a lot and had a lot of bad days.”

She’s been writing since she was 6 or 7. And says “there are videos and home movies of me telling stories when I was 3.”

She read the Chicken Soup books, which were good for her soul as she mended.

Then this winter during the pandemic she read they were looking for submissions and knew she had the perfect story for them

She sent it in and forgot about it.

Then a few months ago the publishers contacted her and said she was short-listed and offered her an editor to work with.

It wasn’t until she got her first 20 complimentary books that she realized her story led off the 29 new stories in the “relationships” section of the 300-page teen tome.

“I was over the moon that I was the first entry. And a Canadian.”

She said “there are various voices and experiences about what it means to be a teen.”

After graduating GHS in 2014 and a victory lap, a few years ago she sought out Jacob to seek “closure” to her spurned romantic overtures, which sadly ended unsatisfyingly for Tilson.

And while Tilson eventually tracked down her high school sweetheart  — and still “friend” — she was able to reconnect but still  “end that chapter” of their relationship mutually and amicably and “move on.”

So in hindsight it made for a great if bitter sweet story to tell.

And it give her her first exposure in a “recognized publication,” which she will use to top off her CV.

Tilson is still in contact with Jacob through the occasional text; and he does know about the story, but she doesn’t have his email to send him a copy.

Maybe some day. Maybe not. She’s good either way.

But she has given a signed book copy to Janice McLelland, her Grade 4 teacher at Muskoka Beechgrove School, who mentored her early love of writing.

In the meantime, Tilson continues her literary quest “by hand then on computer” — in between reading and instilling in children the literal love of words and stories she shares at every opportunity.

She doesn’t expect she’ll ever fall back really on her own health struggles as a source for future story material — though she has chronicled it down for posterity and as a cathartic exercise.

Only “metaphorically” for sure in other prose or novels.

“I want to get away from it, because it affects my identity.”

It’s not who she is now. Like her forlorn love affair she’s trying to move on.

Tilson says she “recovered — but not cured” and wonders herself: “Would I want to read my story?

“It can be upsetting.”

For now her focus is on a sequel to one of her original books, one each of which is high fantasy, low fantasy and one of plain fiction about “isolation” in which she does address mental health issues.

Then there’s the matter of borrowing her sister’s copy of Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale to read in her spare time — while also taking care of two dogs and three cats.

Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul — with a hundred similar stories — goes on sale Aug. 17 through Indigo, Amazon and Walmart.

“I can’t wait to go grocery shopping and see it,” says Tilson.

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