11:02 a.m. - 2003-10-20
A Writer Always
NaNoWriMo, suddenly, is only ten days away. We have our first meet-up tomorrow night, and I'm starting to feel vaguely like a chicken with my head cut off. I have a to-do list for outside of work for the first time in a long time, and while it's kind of satisfying to be so busy, it's also pretty hectic.
Last night, I spent the evening with Diana, and we had such an awesome time. We went for dinner, and we spent two hours tripping over each other because we were talking so eagerly to each other. We spent a good part of the time discussing life as a writer. Both of us have been writing for as long as we can remember, and comparing stories and habits and tricks (she was a big fan of the "and then she woke up and it was all a dream" school of writing) was like discovering you aren't alone in the world. Every time I spend time with her I am more amazed by how much we have in common. Talking about writing, about reading, about books and words and nerds, was so incredibly satisfying I could have stayed there all night. We didn't, though, opting for a trip to the bookstore instead where we discovered that Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret has indeed been updated to be more accurate, and also finding a fabulous name for our hopeful kitten we want to get next year. (I won't reveal this fabulous name until the kitten actually materializes.) It was positively fabulous all around.
When I got home, I was dispatched to the basement to continue sorting through the boxes of old school work, which actually tied in quite nicely to the rest of my evening. I found so many old stories, some of them from before I even started school. The most impressive one is one I found last week - my very first novel, written in 8 chapters at the age of 5. While it is not exactly the greatest work of fiction since Dickens, it's nonetheless pretty impressive for a five-year-old. I read through it and so many other stories, laughing at the ideas, smiling at the occasionally bad spelling (overall, I've always been a good speller, but there were some classic mistakes).
And what struck me most was how I could ever have thought I wanted to be anything but a writer. How could I not have seen that writing has been in my blood since birth? Looking through those piles and piles of pages, seeing the sheer volume of stories, remembering how much I loved writing them, I don't know how I could have stopped for so long. And the other thing that this brought about was realising quite how much I owe to a few of my teachers. There are two that stick out in my mind for really turning me into the kind of writer I am today - they encouraged me, they taught me tons (particularly my grade 7 Language Arts teacher who taught us how to type), and they believed in me. The comments on the papers from those years are still enough to make me grin like a loon.
As I told Diana last night, when I publish my first novel, I will find them, and I will press the book into their hands, and I will show them their names in the acknowledgements, and I will thank them for seeing in me what I wasn't always aware of myself, for encouraging it, and for always believing in me.
