Brian Jakowski
On writing
Looking back at my oldest memories, I had a writer trying to break out of me. When I reread an old post, he’s still trying to get out.
Back in Middle school, I got excited about writing assignments. When everyone else whined, “How do I write 500 words on Christopher Columbus?” I thought, “Only 500 words, that’s nothing.”
I got lost in stories like Huckleberry Finn or Treasure Island. After Reading Jack London’s Call of the Wild and White Fang, I sat down to start my adventure story about the wilderness.
Those efforts never came to anything. The only short story I finished was The Attack of the Giant Spiders. At best, it was a rip-off of every bad Saturday morning B Movie I’d seen. The hammocks in the photo below always remind me of that story.
During college, my roommates introduced me to Tolkien. I read and reread all of his works. My enthusiasm for his writing launched me into reading many other writers and types of literature. After college, I remained a voracious reader but rarely found time to write.
I didn’t really start to write until I took up journaling after the death of my son. Those entries…
