When it came to choosing a title for this blog, I was, as I've come to expect, as hopeless as ever. So I chose a title which makes no sense whatsoever out of context. Sorry 'bout that, but I am going to rectify the situation. You are welcome.
When I started writing, I was in second or third grade. I wrote a play. It was about a princess. It was roughly eight pages..., which means it was four pages of wide ruled paper, front and back. Since then, the writing hasn't stopped, though it has evolved - and hopefully improved. I wrote mostly poetry and songs in the beginning - not good ones, mind. Then, in the year of our Lord 2001, I was introduced to the mother of all fantasy stories, the story which has been forever seared into my soul, and by which, I judge all other stories...
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| Can you hear the majestic theme music? Can you? |
My life was changed forever by the great, nigh incomparable, J.R.R. Tolkien. That man managed to write something that has so profoundly changed me I still can't describe it. Not many stories can compete with all that courage and cowardice, light and dark. It instilled in me the incontrovertible need to tell stories; I was possessed with the desire. I started writing a story, a story that has been growing in my mind for eleven years. Yep, eleven years. I know, you're only now beginning to realize how nerdy I am, right?
It was going to be a screenplay originally, until I realized in 2008 that I had WAY too much story for a movie. It was just going to have to be a book. BUT who was I to think I could write a novel? Novels are hard, y'all. I mean, I don't know if you've thought about it, but earth-rockingly talented and brilliant people write novels. Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, J.K. Rowling, and Victor Hugo, just to name a few. More than that, have you ever read a good book? Have you noticed that the good ones, the excellent ones, reach into your mind and dare it to consider ideas it has never before approached, and they all seem to contain some beautiful truth, some concept that, given the right momentum, could completely transform the world? It's amazing. The phenomenon bound between the covers of certain stories, not many of them, only the select few, the ones that have actually succeeded in changing the world, can be summed up, for me, in two words: They sparkle. The words glitter off the page and jump into a person. And it is glorious.
Don't ask me how it happens. I didn't even know how to describe it, until one night, when I finally tried to explain it to my eternally patient sister, crying, "They're words sparkle! My words don't sparkle dang it!" I can't tell you how it works. Believe me, if I knew, I never would have been afraid to write a book, but I was, and sometimes, I am. The hope remains, however, that I will muster the skill, but part of me thinks it's something a person is born with, some magic inherent in a few superhumans. Don't get me wrong, even if I wasn't born with it, I'm going to keep writing. I'm addicted to it now. Sometimes..., when I'm all alone in front of the computer, sobbing as I type, I whisper quietly to the keyboard, "I wish I could quit you..." Haha! Just kidding!
Or am I?
Anyway, that's the story. Hope it clears up any confusion.
