Way Back Before the MWBN

Ok, gonna try something different here. I am going to write what comes to me instead of one of the pre-thought-of-topics of the past several posts. Ya, i am going back to classes blog style for me here instead of new blog style. How is it gonna go? No clue.

The main thing right now is the freaking sweltering heat which is attempting to melt my house down around my ears apparently. Well that and the song Tell Her This by Del Amitri, loving this song currently.

But yes what else is going through my mind? What else can i write about? hmmm.... If it was a radio show i would tell somebody to call in a request but i can't really do that...

Instead i think i will talk a little bit about my relationship with writing, aka the love-lust-mindfuck that is my relationship with it. (and be for warned, i am slowly becoming as cocky as a few people in my life have always been, meaning i don't really introduce myself as "hi, I'm awesome", or at least not yet)

Do you all out there remember when you were forced to write those little short stories for school, it would be about some kind of theme and you would just be expected to write something in some way, like say a story about the pioneers newly in Canada... Sometimes you would be lucky enough to get to write whatever you wanted but this wasn't a frequent occurrence.

Well i forget exactly when but sometime when i was home after the winter semester of university ended i found one of my old stories and it got me thinking back about what it was like to write then. And to be honest it was a colossal pain in the keester. I hate writing stories back then, so instead of really writing stories i took some stuff that i had taught myself about animals or the area or something and wrote about that.

Those stories we also quite clearly the work of a little boy, fights and battles without the idea of loss or emotion. They were not great, in fact they were far from it. But, considering my age, and how much i disliked the activity at the time they actually were kinda good... In my eyes, and no one out there is a harder critic of me than me (why do you think none of these posts gets edited more than the firefox spell check? nothing would ever get posted if i tried).

Did i at the time have a clear and bright talent for writing, was i suddenly going to discover this talent, this hope and instantly know how to write wonderful thoughts and pen down every feeling that crossed my mind? Fuck no. I wrote for school only when i had to, i tried to keep a journal at a couple points but it failed. (currently i am actually managing to write in one on a semi regular basis)

So why am i going on about this period? Because i wasn't gifted at it, i wasn't brilliant at it, but i was good. Yes there were people better, there still are, in fact off the top of my head i can think of 3 blogs put out by people i know that give me a serious run for my money if don't flat out blow by me and leave me eating their dust. The fact that i wasn't the best writer, the smartest, the most talented doesn't matter. There was something then that a teacher could have worked with or at least slightly encouraged.

And currently thinking about it, it is slowly pissing me off just a bit. Not that lack of encouragement, well ya that is, but more so those stupid contests for speeches and stories that they have through grade school. Yes, i get it, you want all of us to get over being shy and be comfortable in front of everyone else. Fine, but lacking giving encouragement to kids who are developing and then ranking them by your own standards is just wrong.

If you want to give a kid a prize for doing well at it fine, but to then say "X's was worse" and furthermore to not even include some kids is a great way to squash the joy out of people. So ya, i went through grade school and over half of high school without writing a lot, i read people's works, i devoured books every single free second i could. But i never really wrote anything myself because to me, at that point, i didn't have the talent so what was the point?

I didn't understand that writing can be so very much a form of release and a way to vent. I have to wonder, if i wrote in a journal then as i do now, without any censor or block from what i think, would it have changed who i am? Would i be as hard line as i am about some things? Would i trust a little easier? I don't know. It is entirely possible that i would be harsher, that i would trust less.

But back to this story of how i started writing, like most stories told by a guy, there is a girl. It wasn't romantic, she was dating a very good friend of mine, we sat side by side in chemistry (grade 11, totally failed the course and couldn't have cared less). She lent me a book by the author Garth Nix called Sabriel. I don't know why or what is it about this book, but every time i read it i have to write. Not want to, have to.

I think it might have been that i enjoyed it so much that time and it had been such a long since i had bothered to read something in this genre. Anyways, me being as picky as me, i didn't know if i would be able to find something i would like and i guess the thought occurred "why don't i write it". I can't tell you what the date was, but i can tell you that i got up, crossed the room, sat down and started writing at my desk. I can tell you that i sat there for somewhere between a half an hour and 2 hours. I can tell you i wrote the entire prologue in its first draft. I can tell you it was that moment that i fell into the mad love-lust relationship with writing.

(to my parents, that means if you don't like me being a writing blame that author and that girl)

Ever since then i have written a little bit, be it blogs, journal entries, or starts of stories. I haven't ever actually managed to finish any of them. Journals and blogs don't end, and as for my stories, i tend to play with an idea until it occurs to me to write a different one and then i jump ship asap and start the new one.

And that is changing, i am planning and working out a novel like a real writer or something, i am reading the "great works" to get perspective, reading new authors to remind myself that it isn't all as bad as the old stuff, and when all else fails and i don't manage to work on MWBN i still do some work for this place or in my journal. I'm a writer, the bug took a while to work its way under my skin but now i have one in my brain and one in my heart. And neither of them are going anywhere. This is gonna sound monumentally cheesy, and it is, and i don't care i am writing it here anyways.

I don't believe in soul mates, i don't believe that there is that one person out there for you, the universe just isn't that simple. But i do believe there is something that is in you to do above and beyond everything else you do. For me that thing is writing. If i do have a soul mate it isn't a person, it is this activity, when i get to write something that truly expresses how i feel. That is the one thing i could never willingly give up.

P.S. Next two posts will be the original prologue for MWBN and the new one once it is edited.