Isabella Wimmer – A Writer in The Pursuit of Happiness

In my mind, an array of characters is born daily, drifting in and out of my thoughts. Usually, they’re characters I wish I had seen on the screen when growing up. If I had thought their existence outside of my mind possible, I could have drawn inspiration and even become these characters myself. Writing, then, is the manifestation of such thoughts.

I think that by putting pen to paper we bring alive otherwise solitary experiences and make them commonly accepted. In other words, writers are thought leaders and have the incomparable power of creating and redefining norms.

As a Social Anthropology graduate, I am acutely aware of the responsibility that comes with this power. Namely, storytelling is a part of what makes us human and what is allowed to be considered as such.  This is partially the reason that calls for more diversity within the film industry. What is more, not only is there a lack of diversity, but there is also a lack of stories that inspire and offer guidance. Just like the characters in my mind always aimed to achieve.

As a writer and human being myself, I want to create what I would have needed to see when growing up. I am an avid reader and live for stories that make me feel good about myself, about life in general, and about life in its particularities. That is the genesis of my writing.

For example, the first books introducing me to blissful escapism were the Harry Potter series. To this day, it still fills me with immense pride to have read the fifth part–over 1000 pages in length–in a matter of two days. Showers and eating are overrated, anyways. Once I finished the books and the movies, the stories stuck with me so much that I even started writing my own fanfiction. This experience taught me how to become an expert in a particular field, in order to further elaborate on the subject matter.

Fanfiction wasn’t my first writing rodeo, though. I distinctly remember that as a child I would make up stories and characters with my Barbie and Polly Pocket dolls. My mom would then encourage me to write them down to the best of my availability with plans to make a novella.

Further down the line, I strayed off the writing path in the process of learning other languages. After all, I am a native German/Romanian speaker and started writing and reading in these languages. At 13, I fell in love with the English world and started reading books and watching TV in their original versions. Later on, I learned to speak Spanish while living in Argentina for a year, which made me forget most of my Romanian. In the midst of this linguistic turmoil, it was time for me to choose one language to practice my craft in, and I chose English. After attending an American International High School and University in the UK, I am more than confident in my skillset, both grammatically and creatively.

At university, I chose to study Social Anthropology to feed my incessant curiosity about the world we live in and the people who inhabit it. I hoped it would give me content to write about, to make political and significant statements.

I will say this, there is nothing in this world that is totally perfect and this was true for Anthropology as a discipline. It struck me as overtly cynical about the world we live in without offering any practical solutions or ethical resolutions. In all fairness, Social Anthropology is not meant to do so, albeit I wished it did. Nevertheless, the course changed me as a person, my outlook on the people who inhabit Earth, and my critical thinking ability. So, I decided to conduct anthropological research of my own on how people become happy in life.

The pursuit of happiness became my motivation. I wanted to write content which would comfort my readers emulating television creations like Modern Family (there’s a special place in heaven for the Modern Family creators).

This mindset inspired me to write for student publications. The more articles I wrote, the more opportunities I acquired to witness how people reacted to the humor and lightheartedness I could generate, even on tough topics. My confidence grew to the point that I decided to invest my time into creating my own mini-series; something I am currently working on.

So many critically acclaimed works of art centre around tragedy and the lowest points of human existence. However, as one writer once told me: “Writing sad stories is the easy part.  Indeed, it is imparting the feeling of happiness that is difficult to put ink to; because pure bliss just can’t be captured by the weather.”

Through all of these experiences, I have finally found my voice as a writer. I don’t want to take the easy road of describing my inner despair as rain drops on my window in the rhythm of my empty, but beating heart. Instead, I aim to convey the little things of everyday life that contribute to happiness in