At least as far back as third grade I have liked story-writing. Back then, however, I liked the idea of writing much more than the actual act or results of said writing. My teacher had cast a magic spell on me (probably something like “writosious” or another nonsense and non-Latin word) just by how she presented the writing “craft.”
One day in third grade (this is when I lived in Wamego, KS) our teacher gave us all a blank, white book. Rather than simply telling us what to do with the book, she delved into the magical world of blank pages and a blank cover waiting to be filled. She told us that throughout the school year each one of us would fill our own blank book with the unique stories that came to our imagination. Each one of us had different ideas and different tales to tell. Mind you, my family moved to New Jersey in the middle of that school year, so I didn’t get too far into my own book; and I ended up destroying it in an attempt to forget Kansas. Even so, that blank white book and another story-writing assignment from the same teacher set me on the road to writing…although I did try to “grow up” for a while by considering other career paths like astronaut, scientist and historian.
Now on a seeming tangent, I became a big reader over the years. It didn’t start that way, but I definitely became a book addict (“I’m Timothy and I’m a book addict.” “Hi, Timothy”). But in seventh or eighth grade I finally realized anyone is allowed to check out teen and adult books from the library regardless of age. My first experience there resulted in checking out Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (which I didn’t read) and The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks (which just happened to be randomly placed on a shelf). Two Shannara books later I realized something that has not left me the same – not only do I love books, but I could write them as well!
You see, spring had arrived during my eighth grade year (this would be in 2001) and I was reading The Wishsong of Shannara during english class (that day it was a very relaxed class for some reason). I believe it’s near the end of the death scene that I suddenly realized I wanted to tell stories like Terry Brooks does. I couldn’t remove that thought from my mind in order to continue reading, so I pulled out a piece of paper and began doodling down some ideas on it. And that is where my writing began.
I’ll blog about the years that followed in another post, but for now I’m heading off to…somewhere…like my mind.