Tell me a story...

[sallytuppence]

It's so freaking hot in my office today! I need some distraction

Comments

[ccfinlay]

I'd always farted around with it, but then when I was about 30, I found myself caught between a kid and my father. My father, who'd always wanted to paint and had various reasons for not being able to do it, won millions of dollars in the lottery and had no more excuses for not painting... and did not paint. He'd pissed away his talent or his courage or something. (He disowned me and disappeared for the second time in my life: maybe he started to paint again later.) But then I had this baby, and I knew I was going to tell him to follow his dreams as he grew up, and how could I tell him that when I hadn't followed mine. So I knew I needed to do something, to be true to myself, to be a good example for my son, and to take advantage of the time before I lost whatever little chance I had the way my dad did. That's when I stopped farting around and daydreaming and started finishing stuff and submitting it regularly.

[sallytuppence]

That's really interesting, Charlie; thanks for sharing it. Sounds like you made an intentional, individual decision. A lot of the stories below are like mine: we joined a community (the OWW, e.g.) of supportive fellow writers, and/or sort of "slid into it".

[sallytuppence]

Hey Charlie, a gender split is starting to develop here, in the responses. Do you see it?

[jennreese]

I don't see it. Fill me in!

[sallytuppence]

Hey, it answers the question if you think it does.

All hail the OWW! I'm right where you are on a lot of this stuff, though attending BH this year has started pushing me beyond The Fear and into the I Am A Real Writer mindset.

[gregvaneekhout]

It came for me in my late teens, after a couple of years of reading the intros to short story collections by guys like Stephen King and Harlan Ellison, and I realized that those guys worked their asses off at writing, even after achieving success. I don't really remember having a light bulb moment so much as a period of light slowly dawning over which I realized I simply wanted to be a writer, but I wasn't doing anything to make it happen. I do remember at one point declaring that I would start finishing stories and submitting them, and after that I spent about three weeks writing a 1500-word story, submitted it to a little horror zine called New Blood, they accepted it, and even though they folded before publishing my story, and it took years and years before I published anything, I was hooked.

[sallytuppence]

Didn't you draw comics, too?

I just imagine you drawing comics...

[gregvaneekhout]

I always liked drawing, and for a while I fancied being a cartoonist -- like a Gary Larsen or something -- but then I realized that, while I can sometimes make amusing doodles, I really can't draw. I was much more willing to put in the time and effort to learn how to write than I was to learn how to draw, so that settled that.

I still fetishize art supplies, though. Mmmmmm, Rapidographs ...

[sallytuppence]

*doesn't know what a Rapidograph is*

[iagor]

Hmmm. If you put me and writing implements in the same room, sooner or later I will try to scribble something.

7 - pen and paper
12 - typewriter (manual not electric)
19 - word processor
21 - PC

Have been at it ever since. When did I get serious? Very hard to say. I just sort of sank into it.

When did I start thinking of myself as a writer? When I got an agent. It went somewhat like this, "Huh. I guess I don't suck thaaaat badly."

[sallytuppence]

The external validations are really interesting, and they do often seem to serve as a catalyst, not just for more writing, but for self identification as a writer. For you, getting an agent; for me and Sharon, getting an EC on the OWW; for Mike, winning a prize in the WotF; for others, their first publication. We really do need others to tell us that we don't suck, which is one reason, I guess, why our community is so important.

Thank goodness our community is not full of people who tell us that we suck!

[iagor]

Oh the EC for me was a wonderful experience, as well. Unexpected and inspiring, and I recall being elated for weeks after. So in some sense, Charlie is basically responsible for everything I've done.

But I'm a very materialistic, pragmatic person. :( I probably won't actually consider myself an okay writer until something sells through its first printing. Who knows when it will happen.

[sallytuppence]

Oh yeah, Charlie's been a wonderful mentor for me, too. I still go to him with all my questions.

And materialistic, yes! My family didn't really start asking me about writing until after the first time they went to Barnes & Noble to buy a magazine with my story in it.

Maybe we keep setting ourselves new markers of validation: the first EC, the first published story, the agent, the first book deal, the first sell through...

Keeps us going, I guess!

[haddayr]

I'm sorry. You don't want to hear this. But I was serious about my writing even as I held a crayon in my chubby little hand.

What got me publishing was realizing that genre publications would actually buy my stuff, four or five years ago.

[sallytuppence]

My daughter is an artist (ever since she could hold a pencil in her grubby paws), and she talked to me about "expressing herself." She's felt the need, from a young age, to express herself through art: drawing, stories, music. So I do buy that people feel like writers (or artists and of course as musicians) from a young age.

I wonder if those of us coming to it later have more trouble self identifying as artists. I know I do.

[haddayr]

I think that's a good point. Even in the years and years I wasn't seeking publication, and the years and years I was seeking and failing to publish, it never occurred to me that I was anything other than a writer.