When I was little, I was so frustrated because I had such big ideas, but I always seemed to forget them so quickly. I would try to remember, but I couldn't. I remember watching my mother make a shopping list, so she wouldn't forget what we needed to buy. A way to remember ideas: writing. That was the first reason I wanted to write.

The next reason came from a need to be heard. I grew up in a family of six. There was always so much talking. You could say something, but within minutes, sometimes seconds, everyone would forget what you said. Writing it down, though, made it permanent, or at least more permanent that air and sound vibrations were. I started keeping journals. My first was a spiral notebook with powder pink paper. My next was a little green diary with a lock. I threw those away when I was a teenager because most of the entries were too childish, the big ideas of a little kid.

As soon as I learned how to write sentences, I began writing poetry. I remember my first poem was about the Easter Bunny, but I don't remember the exact words, something about how the Easter Bunny was coming to make me happy.

In fifth grade, I loved diagramming sentences and learning about the various parts of grammar. One day, we were writing a descriptive paragraph. I decided to write about horses. I decided to just try to do the best I could, try to be poetic. My teacher entered my descriptive paragraph into the school's annual writing contest. I won a blue ribbon and a book, Knots on a Counting Rope, and my little paper went into the district contest.

I started writing poetry every day.

In junior high, I started writing stories. Most of them were love stories. When I wasn't writing stories, I was inventing worlds, amusements parks, vehicles, tools, and anything else my mind could imagine. I drew my inventions in detailed diagrams, but I knew they wouldn't come to life except through stories.

In eighth grade, I wrote a story for English class. The story was based on a very strange, ghostly experience I had in the middle of the night a few weeks earlier. My teacher entered it into the annual writing contest, and again I won a pretty ribbon. That settled it; I wanted to be a writer.

In high school, I wrote stories and poetry. I wrote essays and reports. I wasn't very good at it. Most of my work just flat out sucked. I mentioned story ideas to my friends, never without admitting that they were story ideas, and waited for their feedback. Most of my story ideas were unoriginal or boring.

After college, I took a creative writing course and threw together some short stories, but none of them were particularly stimulating. I gave up because I couldn't come up with a good idea.

I decided to focus on non-fiction instead. I wrote lots of non-fiction. Most of it expressed interesting ideas but demonstrated poor writing skills. I've always enjoyed non-fiction, but I still longed to be a novelist.

I read every non-fiction book I could get my hands on, but I was never much of a fiction reader. So many stories bored me. I loved science fiction and fantasy, but the writing in these genres often lacked the moods I wanted to experience. In college, I learned to love Shakespeare. I also learned to fall in love again with children's literature because it was face paced, and there were always happy endings. Gradually, fiction reading became a standard part of my life.

After I had children, I began telling them stories off the top of my head. I had missed diving into my imagination. I knew I wanted to write fiction in addition to my non-fiction, but I was afraid.

Then I had an epiphany. There's tons of copied plots, bad writing, scenes that drag on way too long, blah, blah, blah... Yet, those novels were published and selling. I realized that no matter how horrible my writing was, somebody would be willing to read it, and somebody might even like it. So I started writing again, knowing that I probably wouldn't become a member of the greatest writers ever list, but at least I could get my ideas into the world in a more permanent way, more permanent that just speaking them into the air in front of my children.

And that's why I write, so I can be heard, so I can feel like the things I say are important enough to be heard by anyone willing to read them. Maybe I'll get another blue ribbon along the way.

Labels: Writing