The Writer In Me

As early as third grade, I knew I wanted to be a writer. And I have always been an avid reader. Reaching into the recesses of my mind, I cannot remember who cultivated this love of reading and writing, probably a combination of people. I know my mom would allow my sister and I to go to the library as often as we liked, sometimes spending the whole day there. It was the big downtown library.

My world was so small I never knew there were other massively smaller branches. We would use the same thick opaque plastic library bags we dropped books off in, to go around book hunting, conferring with each other occasionally. Our first stop were the computers in the children's section. I cannot even remember what we did, but I knew I was using the catalog to search for sequels to gems like the BabySitter's Club, and Sweet Valley Kids...Twins, High and eventually University. All of this before I was 12. Don't let me get started on the Harlequin Romance novels before 13 too. If it had been published I'd mostly likely read it. The librarians knew us very well. After helping Sis B with her selections, we'd head up to the young adults section to pick up my selections, and then on the Ready Balcony. It was a screened in balcony on the second floor with several rocking chairs. We would settle down, maybe eat a snack we'd brought and spend hours reading. There was no limit on how many books we could check out. We often walked out with fifteen to twenty books each.

At home, in between reading I'd pen my own stories in those 80 sheet notebooks. Buying them was a huge gift to me. Those clean white pages held so much promise...and the stories just flowed. One story per notebook, sometimes front and back. My greatest delight came when my favorite great uncle who wasn't around much, came to visit and gave me an electric word processor...with a little flip screen! Wow, I loved that thing so much! You could even put disks in to save your work. I would often stay up in the dark typing away. Between the two disks I had, two notebooks and a journal, I had four works of fictions at least 200 typed pages each. When my mom died and the house got cleaned out along with my hard work before I was allowed back in, it destroyed a part of me. From then on I stuck to works of poetry.

Long story short, in the process of moving around I have not a single one of my works with me. I buried my desire to write and simply read. As you can imagine I did not lead the life of a normal child. My life consisted of school, reading, church and church related activities. Full Stop.

Writing has always been cathartic for me. A few months ago I began a little novella that parallels some of what I am going through and will share some of it here. It's time to wake up the writer in me again.