When I learned to read, the very first book I read was The Little Prince. After finishing it I thought it was a very beautiful children story. I was about 6 years old. The first time I read that book I decided I wanted to be a writer. So I started writing, first short simple stories, then songs, then longer stories for assignments. When I was 8 I started learning english all by myself. This happened because the Spice Girls were the hottest thing at that time and I was a huge fan. I knew all the lyrics to their songs, and my dad told me one day that my pronunciation was actually good. He helped a little but I eventually taught myself. Since then I’ve been writing in both spanish and english, but for some odd reason it’s easier for me to write in english. I had a lot of stories and songs in notebooks, and they were just there. I felt like sharing them but I never found where. I started a blog, but I still felt like I needed something else. I had stories I wanted to turn into movies. I’ve always loved movies and I’ve always wanted to make movies, so I wrote scripts too. And I kept all these things locked in my closet, not letting them out. Not because of fear, or embarrassment, but because I never found a place where I could comfortably share them.

Then last year around august we had an assignment in spanish class, and I was really looking forward to doing it. It consisted of writing three different letters: love, suicide, and desert island. The love letter was meant to be for somebody real because we were supposed to send it. I’ve never been in love so I had no one to write it to, but I did my best, and it was acclaimed one of the bests. I wrote the suicide letter but I kept it to myself and never did anything else with it. I even hid it because of all the things I wrote. The desert island one was really chaotic and hateful towards humanity and how they’re destroying the planet. One of the sentences I remember says “I’m happy here, alone in this island, laughing in your faces while you have no real air, no real food, and no real understanding of the beauty of nature”. And they were locked with the rest of my things.

One day, I was watching 3rd Rock From The Sun in the morning, before going to school. It was a scene where Harry and Tommy were writing an X-Files script, and Harry insisted it should start with a picnic. According to Tommy picnics weren’t exciting, and the script should start with something exciting, like a fight. Then Harry says “I’ve been to some exciting picnics”. It was hilarious how they managed to write a script for a show like that, and considering I used to watch it all the time, it seemed even funnier for me. That day when I came back to my house I googled (imdb) 3rd Rock From The Sun. I read about the actors and the movies they were in and the things they were currently doing. I discovered that French Stewart actually made Inspector Gadget, with Michelle Trachtenberg, who played Harriet The Spy, another movie I watched when I was a kid. Kristen Johnston played Wilma in The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, and Thomas Gibson who plays Aaron Hotchner in Criminal Minds was in it too. John Lithgow played the voice of Lord Farquaad in Shrek. And Joseph Gordon-Levitt was in 10 Things I Hate About You. After clicking here and there I found his twitter and the link to HitRECord. I’ve been told I sound like a groupie when I tell this story (my friend says so), but she’s not a member of the site and she doesn’t speak english either so she wouldn’t understand anything. Then I found HitRECord and I thought, “What the hell! This is awesome!” I remember reading mushr’s Sad Green Tomato, then listening to Joe reading it, and watching an animated video of it. I read, listened, and watched a lot of things, then joined. That night I went through my writings looking for something good enough to contribute. The love letter was on my desk and I eyed it a few times, but I didn’t think it was good enough. After a while I gave up searching, but the letter was still there. I took it and read it a few times. I translated it to english and read it over and over again. Then I thought, what if I record myself reading it? I did it, twice, and then I listened to both audios. The first one felt awkward. The second one felt fake, because since I had already read it, I knew the mistakes I made and I knew how to correct them. So I uploaded the first take the next day. What happened after that, RichieMillennium heard it, took a bunch of videos, and mixed it all up together. It was already beautiful, and Joe added a piano piece into that. I started reading the comments and most of them mentioned that my voice was heartbreaking and beautiful. I pinkified (seriously) and I felt happy. Like, really really happy. First record ever and it turned out into something so amazing. First time I ever shared willingly a piece of writing, and look at it. How can anyone not feel excited by that? I understood what HitRECord really meant when I saw the result of my story, which I didn’t even considered to be good. But the people who contributed even with hitting the heart, everyone helped me realize that I had finally found the right place for me to share even a one-line story.

So, one of the things that amazes me the most about hitRECord is that it's worldwide. People from everywhere around the world are hitting the REC button and joining and creating. People you only know through here are sharing their creations. It's an encouraging thought. Makes me a proud internet child.

To create, to share, to collaborate. HitRECord lives up to these verbs and so much more. And I love it.