Writing

I have been making up stories ever since I could remember. Every writer says that as though it is special, but I do intend to claim "special snowflake" status with this statement. You see, I didn't--wouldn't--learn to read until the age of eight. Eight. That is second or third grade, or something.


I don't really know, because I was homeschooled until 6th grade. Not radical, or new, I know. But I refused to read until the age of eight. This didn't mean my imagination wasn't going a mile-a-minute, it just meant that none of those earliest stories ever made it to paper. I was living a pre-Historic life, in the sense that those in the field of history define it.

If no one wrote it down, if no one remembered it later to write down, it occurred in preHistory. Kinda funny if you think of it that way.

I say that every writer says that they've been making up stories blah-blah-blah, and I wish that writers didn't claim that entirely for themselves. Those who write as an active hobby or professionally are not the only people with imaginations on the planet. Everyone dreams up stories, everyone. I used to be in a choir and I still run into people who compliment my voice by way of saying "I wish I could sing, you have a wonderful voice," or something like that. Everyone can sing. It is just some elitist asshat who told them they don't sing well enough. And I think that somewhere along the line, every "I can't write"-writer heard some elitist asshat opine some stupidry about who can write, and what one must write to write, and what one must do with their writing, etc.

This doesn't account for "I can't write"-writers who compare Great Literature (TM) to their own offerings. No one is there to advise them that those Great Writers who wrote all of that Great Literature lived in a different time than our own. The common admonishment is that "they didn't have facebook, so they had more time." I don't necessarily agree with that, as people's lives are always full of things to do and one must find time and space to write.

This time and space is not always adequate, despite the feeling that Great Literature is produced laboriously in some immaculate office, or a counter-cultured mess of a room with papers tacked to the walls (seriously, who does that? The fuck is wrong with them?), or just not where aspiring writers find themselves trying to write. This is discouraging in and of itself. The feeling of Doing It Wrong.

No one exactly knows what It is, but there is the definite feeling that it can be done correctly and it can be done incorrectly. I'd just like to point that out to writers--all people, because I believe that all people can be, are, writers--that you must write somewhere. You must write, write anything at all anywhere you can. If you have an idea, put it to paper or save it on your computer.

It might die there. Yes.

It might fester there. Yes.

It might plague you there. Yes.

It might be MOTHER OF GOD seen there. Yes. Most definitely yes.

But get it the fuck out of your fucking head. It will plague, fester, and die there. Yes, it will. Trust me. It has happened to me before. But you know what won't happen to it, and what will be the saddest thing of all? It will never be seen there. Never. It will die an unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. At least put the poor dear to paper, so that if it should die it shall do so remembered.

I say put your ideas to paper because on paper is where you can breathe life into it. You can draw in words around it, you can circle things, you can point arrows at stuff. In a document on the computer you can write it out over and over again until it begins to behave, and do what you'd like it to. Both ways are workable. Once you start to get something you like, that has a bit of length (I won't say how long or anything), print it out. Draw all over it. Get the smudge of dirt off its face, and flatten its hair just a bit. Be its parent, because you are its parent.

But you have to get it out of your head, else it will never grow to anything. It will do nothing if it is held entirely within your mind. You have to get it out. Because everyone can be a writer, I believe, it's just that no one has ever said that to them in seriousness. No one has ever gently helped them plot out character development, or put together a narrative. I won't pretend that I am the one who can do that, but I'll do what I can.