As a child, Brandon Lawson often lived in his own fantasies. He often got in trouble and was sent to his room in isolation as a punishment, but instead of sitting in solitude, Lawson always kept himself busy with his thoughts. 

“I was alone a lot … I always had to use my mind to imagine things,” Lawson said.

Now attending Los Medanos College as a Business major, Lawson has used the wild imagination he has always had to write his first novel, recently published on Amazon, “Hashtag This.”

The novel features various poetic hashtags that are meant to inspire other social media content creators and he decided to write the book when he realized it would be — quite possibly — the first of its kind.

“No one has ever done a book based on hashtags and I thought ‘oh wow, this is unique,’” Lawson said.

This is the first book Lawson has published, but his collection expands much further than Amazon. There are currently 22 short stories Lawson has written and featured on his website and he has also written two sci-fi novels he hopes to someday publish as well. 

His long list of work all began when he got his first official writing experience back in 2014 when he was attending Antioch High School and began to write poetry. After dabbling in poetry for a while, Lawson decided to enroll in a creative writing course and was able to let his creative juices flow. It was in this class Lawson wrote his first short story “The Firm,” a 40-page tale inspired by the movie “Mad Men.” 

Through writing, Lawson also found himself making raps with his friends. During his senior year of high school, Lawson recorded two rap songs and recently created another rap called “Common Sense,” which he plans to post on his social media and YouTube.

Lawson’s talents in writing have also extended to screenwriting. Lawson wrote his first screenplay “Lost Among the Tides,” a coming of age story that features a teenage boy named Xavier Wallace. Wallace gets in trouble for breaking and entering and he begins to spin out of control until his world gets turned around when he meets a young girl who transforms him into a better person again. Lawson’s heartwarming yet dramatic story won him the Best Screenplay award at the Davis Chinese Film Festival in October 2017.

While he has received an accolade for his work, he has dealt with criticism as well. On a web platform created for writers, Lawson was recently trying to market his work by reaching out to fellow writers, however, his self-marketing was received with criticism.

“People were bashing me and cursing me out,” recalled Lawson.

Instead of letting the hate get to him, he laughed it off and continued to produce more writings.

Lawson has always maintained this confident and positive attitude, not only with his creative work, but with his future as well.

Lawson is currently studying an alternative career focus in an entirely different field: business. Lawson firmly believes that one’s “major and career don’t always have to be the same,” and claims he’d be happy either having a career in accounting or writing.

But he ultimately hopes his creative work, especially in screenwriting, can lead him to his dream career as a movie director.

While he has a long road ahead of him to achieve his dreams, Lawson continues to immerse himself in his passions through posting content on his website every week, updating his professional Twitter page, and reaching out to local competitions and media publications to get his work noticed.

Lawson’s creative mind is something he is aware of, and he knows that one day, it will all pay off.

“I’m destined to do this,” Lawson said.

Lawson’s novel “Hashtag This” is currently available for purchase on Amazon for $2.99. To read Lawson’s short stories, movie essays and poetry, please visit www.bwlawson.com.