The Birth Of A Writer
Every eccentric needs an origin story, and this is mine.
Page One
Everyone starts their journey as a writer differently. For me, it began with a book shortage. You see back when I was 11 years old, I lived out in the suburbs and travelling to the library involved a never on-time bus and streets without sidewalks.
My local library was a scrappy, anemic creature with barely enough books to fill a children's section downtown. This was a problem because I was a rampant bookworm who consumed content faster than it could be transferred between from one branch to another.
Weren't there other options ?
At this point in my life I had the plot-building privilege of living in an area that was both a food desert, and a literary one. The suburb wasn’t always like this, however, amalgamation hadn’t been kind to it and, much of its economic heart and commercial infrastructure had been gutted.
This meant that everything centered around malls. Mom-and-pop shops like used bookstores had been slain and replaced by titans fighting in a coliseum of fluorescent light.
Since I wasn’t a fan of long commutes or sound bouncing off concrete, I decided to become my own supplier and start writing the stories that I wanted to read. This led to the birth of a 300-page novel about an Appalachian old folks home named Forget-Me-Not Manor.
I wish I still had the manuscript, but it’s one of many things that was lost over the years. Luckily most of the story lives fully intact in my memory, and one day I might re-commit it to paper. Regardless, the key thing is that I learned while fairly young that I could turn words into worlds.
Practical imperfections
I’m blessed at this point in life, to be able to support myself by writing. Most of what I write is commercial in nature, but I’ve never forgotten my love for silly, playful, and absurdist stories.
Which is why I still craft little oddities, though they’re typically only shared with friends and family. The things I write for joy are more art than entertainment. Their experiments in expression and purposefully break rules.
Someday, when I have enough time to engage in other forms of play, I’ll string my baubles of words together, polish them up, like a suit of armor, and send them off to explore the world.
In the meantime though I've made the decision to share my creations in their embryonic state because perfection is the enemy of progress. I’m very publicly practicing what I preach in order to foster solidarity and encourage other creatives to nurture their gifts with playful kindness.
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