On Wri- On Reading

 

11/11/2024 11:22 AM CST

Dear Reader,

Let's talk about writing for a second, shall we? But to talk about writing, I think first we have to talk about reading.

I have been a reader ever since I was a little kid. I was part of some scholastic book program at school where if you took a book home, read it aloud in front of your parent, and your parent signed a sheet saying that you did it, you got a sticker on your card. For every four stickers that you got on your card, you were given a coupon for a free personal pan pizza from a famous fast food chain pizza restaurant. This was around first through early second grade, and I ran that free pizza game hard. I tried to take a book home every night because I wanted to rack up those stickers. Plus, I liked spending time reading to my mom or one of the members of the extended family, and those simple times where my mom would take me to the pizza place and we would sit down and share our free little pizza were some of my favorite times, so much so that I am actually getting misty-eyed while I write about it.

Early on, I am not sure that I liked reading, so much as I was conditioned through Pavlovian methods to be eager to do it. I think my reading grades in early school were considered poor, despite my voracious appetite for both short picture books and free mini pizzas. Luckily, I liked more than just reading for an external reward. I liked stories.

I loved my cartoons and shows from the television. We were lucky because my first stepdad bought us a VCR and supplied me with plenty of blank tapes. I was the only one who knew how to properly use the VCR, and I was quickly learning how to tape anything and everything from the TV. I even knew how to set the timer. I had the entire first season of The Simpsons taped to VHS, even the first airing of the Christmas Special. I had a copy of every movie that they aired on broadcast TV that I felt was good, including both Karate Kid 1 and 2, Space Balls, and Return of the Jedi. The point is, I was obsessed with these stories.

It also helped that I had a babysitter, who lived just down the block, who read me amazing novels. She babysat me a lot, so she would keep our place in the book, and every time she came over, I would hear a little more of the adventure. She read me The Princess Bride and Hatchet, among others, but Matilda was my favorite. The story of the little girl who develops psychic powers and uses them to get revenge on an oppressive society was so awesome. The scenes with Mrs. Trunchbull horrified me, but for some reason, they were my favorites. Maybe I liked knowing she deserved what she got in the end. My favorite part though was that Matilda got to live with her sweet teacher in the end. Fuck, getting misty again.

The point is, stories are powerful.

I started reading novelizations of children's movies when I was about in second grade. They were cheap, and I recognized the images on the covers, so my mom bought them for me. I had Home Alone, Bingo (a story about a cool ass dog, and I have never seen the movie to this day, but I read Bingo at least 20 times), and I also had a novelization of the video game Mega Man 2, that one was probably my favorite. Not only did I love reading about Mega Man fighting his way through killer robots, but the book actually told you one of the better ways to tackle the bosses in the game and what weapons to use on them. I wore that book out. At one point, my dog bit off one of the corners, and I would still read it (I knew enough to guess the missing words). These little books were great starter fodder for an early reader.

Then I found Poe. Then they had us read some Bradbury and Twilight Zone television scripts. Then there was Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Then I found Redwall by Brian Jacques. But then, in the fourth grade, I borrowed Pet Semetary from my school library, and that's when it was truly over for me.

Growing up in the '80s, Stephen King just seemed like a fact of life. People were constantly referencing his work. There were commercials all over the television urging you to sign up for Stephen King book clubs, where they would send you a new spine-tingler every month. Those commercials gave me horrible nightmares as a child. I only saw seconds of the IT mini-series to decide it was too scary for me. Picking up Pet Semetary was an act of courage; I was convincing myself I was mature enough to handle it. The thing was, I loved it. It was a little too adult for me, and some of it went over my head, but I got the point: a man was driven mad by his grief and made some really bad choices.

I was hooked, and I was off to the races after that.

The thing was, ever since way back in fourth grade, after reading Pet Semetary, I always fancied that being an author and writing those kinds of stories was something that I could do too. I knew that I loved stories, especially the dark ones, and I thought that I would probably be good at telling them. But I was always too afraid to really try. I might scribble a few pages here or there, but I was convinced that I would never be able to come up with enough words to write a whole book. I ended up falling in love with music instead. Songs only had to be a couple of minutes long. They only had so many words. Music was something I could do; besides, it was sexier than being a writer anyway. So, I didn't give writing much more of a thought through my youth or in my early adulthood.

Then, in my 30s, I became obsessed with the idea of telling stories again. My chosen medium this time was video games. I became convinced that I needed to design an epic video game that mixed aspects of homeless traveling life with an adventure that explored a deeply personal lore that I was building. This is the reason I got into programming. Turns out, designing video games is extremely hard when you want them to be good. Thankfully, the newfound passion for programming landed me a stable job, but still, my creative desires were left unmet.

I am not going to go into what prompted me to finally try writing again. But when I finally did... That fear that I would not be able to come up with enough words or stories was deeply unfounded because the first thing that I tried to write ended up being 180 thousand words. That is about 750 double-spaced pages in a Word document.

I started that massive project about two years ago now. Since then I have also written a 90k word draft in the genre of cabin hauntings. I have a massive memoir in the works that details my life, especially all the juicy parts about homeless life. There are also two more novels with strong starts and strong planning. I am not telling you this to brag. I am telling you this to say, I went nearly 30 years wanting to write but being afraid that I was incapable. Once I started, now you can't stop me. I have written hundreds of thousands of words in the last two years. To think of all that time wasted: I could have started earlier and been honing my craft over those years. That thought is what truly horrifies me.