One day, an idealized number of years ago, a little boy told his mother, “I want to write books!” His mother smiled and supported him. She showed him how to cut a brown paper grocery bag in the right way to have 10-15 blank pages to staple together. Th52-lb-1-8-brown-paper-barrel-sack-500-bundle.jpge boy promptly wrote and drew a story of superheroes versus Godzilla. And aliens.
A few years later, the boy announced that he wanted to learn how to type. After all, how could he become a writer without typing? He saved his money and his dad took him to the local pawn shop, where he bought a beat-up blue manual typewriter. He borrowed a textbook from the library and worked through the lessons all alone. It wasn’t long before he was able to move on from stick figure comic books.
For a time, he dabbled in mystery stories, like the Hardy Boys, but soon returned to the fantastic worlds that so filled his imagination (fired by Lewis, Tolkien, Lawhead, and others). He typed stories of superheroes and monsters, swords and laser guns.
When he reached college, he majored in Writing, learning all he could about the English language, the process of writing, and more. He tolerated the technical side and reveled in the creative. His teachers enjoyed his talent and encouraged him to use it.
Then “real life” took over. Out of college, he had to find a real job, and no matter how he searched, the jobs never had much to do with writing. He plugged away on a massive fantasy novel, but it slowly got pushed aside. He got married, had kids. All forms of writing got pushed farther and farther aside, becoming abandoned for years at a time. For a short while, he found new hope in writing book reviews and started a website, but that too had to be abandoned because of busyness.
Which brings us to the present. I’m no longer the little boy. The typewriter is long gone, as is college. The pressures of life have not subsided, but the desire to use my writing talent has returned with a fervor.
And so the writing journey had a resurrection in 2015. I’ll tell you more about that next time…
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