As ever, I've made a few tweaks here and there but nothing particularly substantial except an Ernie Wise-ism in the opening line that I couldn't resist.
I couldn't tell you the first story wot I wrote, and even less the first I conjured up in my over-active imagination.
I remember one reccuring tale conjured at primary school. It featured two princesses who'd dyed their hair pink and purple. Another story, when I was about eight or nine, got me in trouble at school because I used swear words (oh, the unspeakable anarchy of rebellion!). I remember The Story of Tottenham Teddy, which was technically a collaboration with a boy in my class called Lee, but written by me because I took over and he lost interest.
I remember my mummy teaching me to type on our Amstrad computer, and I applied this skill to the hopefully lost "secret diary" of a girl called Dannii.
I know that such creative writing was the only homework I ever put any effort into at secondary school:
Something about a Marilyn who was shipwrecked on an island and featured clip art. I went overboard (pun not intended) when we got a Windows PC. It was all flouncy fonts, clip art and colour for about a year and a half.
There was also an aborted attempt to write a 'Return to Pepperland' which died when I couldn't bring myself to write real people - The Beatles - which is still something I won't do.
There was another Secret Diary (I liked the form) of an English girl who was orphaned and sent to California to live with her aunt. It occupied my bored hours over a few years, took over 100 pages and her daughter's diary.
It included mafia killings, betrayal, affairs, teenage pregnancy and, worst of all, names likes Venezia, Venus, Unity and whatever nonsense I'd picked up from here and there. It featured whatever I'd read or seen at that time, so it was like Sweet Valley written by Mario Puzo. Worse actually: it was The Godfather ghostwritten for Francine Pascal. It was absolute rubbish, and the corruption of the .doc files was merciful.
That said, I couldn't not write it. I had an idea and I wrote it. That's how it's always been. I have ideas and I write them down. I rarely finish, but I write...
I write because I can't do otherwise. I wonder if 'normal' human beings get ideas and just ignore them, or if I'm the odd one?
Are most folks trained out of these flights of fancy as they grow up? Did I miss that bit?
Once, I wanted to be a movie star who also wrote, or a rock star who also wrote. It never occurred to me that my one absolute constant was, is, and will be writing.
I love music deeply and with huge passion, but I can leave my guitar untouched for weeks. I don't seem to stop writing.
It used to get me in trouble at school. I got so absorbed in sneakily scribbling a story during English once that I didn't hear what Mr M was saying, nor when he asked me a question. I write on buses, trains, planes; at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
I was writing beside my grandfather's death bed, when it was just me and him there, when all there was to do was wait. When all that remained was me and the death rattle. When I wanted nothing more for the universe to take him out of his pain until the moment he was gone. Then, I wanted nothing more than to have him back, so I wrote.
This is not to say I'm any good. I may not be. I'm certainly not trained as those who did Proper Learning at school or university are.
Perhaps I'm supposed to be the writer who sings, not the singer who writes. At least then I could work at home.
Now all I need is to finish something that other humans would want to read, then find an agent and a publisher and readers. No sweat, right?
The thing is, it makes no nevermind. If nobody were ever to read, it wouldn't stop me writing. Is that, do you suppose, the thing that should prove where my ultimate destiny lies?
*
CW 2016.
My dear friend Elise from New Orleans replied to the original post:
“If, when you wake up in the morning, you can think of nothing but writing then you are a writer.”* This was familiar to me from Sister Act II, but that matter-of-fact, course you're a writer! response from a friend I respected very much was more than reassuring then.
She went off into the Next Great Adventure in 2013 and I still miss her, though I never got to meet her in person. It didn't feel quite right to post this again without making some remark. She was fantastic, and I'm hardly alone in missing her.
Since I wrote this particular piece, I've finished two separate novels. I've started even more ideas that so far haven't gone much further than "idea". Of all the things that have happened since 2008, there is one true constant: I write.
*Rainer Maria Rilke
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