So here it is...
I like writing more and more as I grow older. When I was a kid, having to write, "What I did on my summer vacation", was a chore from Satan's armpit. I hated writing.
Don't get me wrong, I've always loved other people's stories and articles. I mean, I was the stereotypical "Book-worm-nerd". People would always find with my nose in a book, rather than out socializing with the other kids.
I even remember my favorite place to read as a kid - in my bedroom closet with an old desk lamp stretched to its cord's limit. Honestly, I hid there because I was the second youngest of six kids, and partial to the rare gems of privacy and quiet in my large family. I even remember how embarrassed my mother was that she had to yell at me to "get out of the closet" in front of her friends. (Nowadays I get the joke, thank you.)
But, I was aware of the power those pages held: from the Sci-Fi stories that fed my geeky imagination; to the hard science texts where I learned the facts about existence; to the myths and fantasy novels that I ran to to get away from those facts when they became too real. Reading was my gateway to other realms, and I loved them all.
It wasn't until my hatred of writing came to a head that I realized that it could utilize this power myself.
I was a young acne warrior in high school with no patience for others; much less teachers that taught subjects I didn't care about: like Creative Writing for English Class. My teacher at the time was losing her patience with me and told me that I was close to failing if I didn't shape up soon. I took this challenge and decided that if I was going to fail, I was going to fail on my own terms. I took two of her assignments and merged them together into a science-fiction story of mutants, misery and bloodshed that only comes out of sheer teen angst. I singed my name to it and handed it in, damn the consequences!
And she loved it.
She loved it enough that she gave it an A- (for not being what she asked for) and said I should add to it and get it published.
I thought she was crazy. It was like my anger was being flung back to me with a, "Good Job!", rather than a condemnation it was screaming for. I still think she said what she did because I did actually put some passion into what I was writing. I even have the old story saved somewhere (not publishing it here, sorry), and I still see the fury that made the story live for me.
It only dawned on me soon after that it was the fury that made the story something she wanted to read more of. That much of the power of writing is in the telling of the story.
So here I am now, after years of putting it off, I'm, going to start writing on a regular basis. Hopefully I can work it out so that if it starts to be a chore, I'll just challenge myself and see where it goes from there.
Starting tomorrow, I'm going to try something I haven't done in awhile here. I hope I'm up to the challenge.
Later,
MiddleMan
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