I have no idea how young I was when I started writing, but when I was 12, I wrote a comedy fiction series called My Summer as a Camp Counselor or How to Commit Suicide in Ten Easy Lessons. My audience was my 6 year old sister and her friends. They were very enthusiastic and I tasted the joy of writing for others and being well-received.
The only things I have ever gotten published (no payment) were a poem for a local newspaper about how stagnant our town had become and how we should look to a neighboring city for lessons on how to grow, and a satirical guest editorial for my college newspaper about how I decided to go to school in Florida to escape the cold North, and ended up freezing to death in an over-air-conditioned classroom. It was called Little Blue Sandra.
In my late second childhood when I was in my 50’s, I took a creative writing class in the local community college and received a plaque proclaiming I was the most out-standing student in Creative Writing. It was a fun class and I learned things. Then my real life and my job started taking up all of my time and I didn’t even think about writing for a while.
Except that every now and then a phrase pops into my head. A title. The name of a character and what it is about him or her that is interesting. I see people waiting in line and before they reach the counter, I’ve given them a complete life history and hopes and dreams. I feel I know them. So far I’ve refrained from talking to them about it.
I miss being a writer. But I worry about letting myself get too involved again. I can’t afford to stay up until the wee hours of the morning just because the words keeping coming and I’ve got to write them down. How am I going to get up at 5:15 so I can go to work? So I just keep having those mental snatches of writing instead.
But writing is writing, whether you call it blogging or journaling, or emailing a friend. The truth of the matter is I love words. I love the way they feel in my fingers as I’m typing them out. I love the sounds they make in mind, the visuals they create at the back of my eyes. Someone once told me you don’t have to get paid to be a writer. I guess that’s true.
