I tell people all the time that I was in third grade when I decided I wanted to be a writer. My teacher encouraged me and that combined with reading The Narnia Chronicles made me decide that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up.
One thing I don’t share that came to mind just the other day is why I started writing during my youth.
I was a painfully shy kid who seemed to change schools every year or two. Kindergarten, then a new school for first-second grades, then moving to Germany from second to fourth grades. Another new school half a year in fourth. Another one for fifth. Yet another from sixth to ninth grades. New one for tenth grade. Another new one middle of tenth grade to eleventh. And then the school I graduated from eleventh to twelfth.
Moving was hard enough, and moving in the middle of my school year was even tougher.
Some people meet me now and they see an extroverted, humorous guy who seems to enjoy the spotlight. Oh, the things we learn as we grow up. Humor is a great way to mask things, right? Always has and it always will be.
When I was young, I would imagine how my life would be if I was more extroverted, more funny, more clever, more (insert whatever it was that I wanted to be). I sometimes acted those scenes out myself. But what I really enjoyed doing was writing them down. Telling stories about characters like myself who were heroic and courageous and romantic. Yeah, I was doing this even in grade school. And I realized that the ME in my stories was different–I could control who he was and what he did.
I could also allow him never to say goodbye.
Maybe that’s corny, but that’s one reason I started to write. I imagined the person I wished I could be–whether it was someone my age or the age I longed to be at that moment. I would play out scenarios. This wasn’t writing to be published–it was just writing out of a desire to change a life I sometimes loathed.
We all have things in our life we wish we could change. Writing turned out to be cathartic, a place I could go to let out emotions and feelings and situations I couldn’t understand or control.
That painfully shy kid is gone for the most part. But the part of me that wishes I could be someone or something else hasn’t. I wish I could be more loving, more giving, more fearless. I wish I could understand and accept. I wish for many things, and many of those wishes go into my writing and my characters.
So much of who we are comes from that wonderful and awful period we call youth. Grade school, junior high (oh dear), high school–I had so many different personas and settings that I really, truly felt like an author writing a myriad of genres.
Funny how I grew up to be just that.
I’ve come back to re-read this blog more than once and have decided I want to comment. Your “I would imagine how my life would be if…” and “I imagined the person I wished I could be” comments are dead-on for me.
When I write, I sprinkle parts of my personality or experiences into the characters. Sometimes I project into a character a wanna-be version of me. Sometimes those traits are noble and good, and other times I’m feeling rather R-rated.
My point is that sometimes I find healing, self-improvement, or just lame satisfaction in the writing exercise.
Thanks for your honest sharing. I look forward to another great read with Ghostwriter.
Glad you enjoyed this blog. Good insight into your writing–I can definitely relate! Appreciate you sharing this.