I don’t think I’ve written anything that wasn’t for school or a scholarship since I was probably about 7. Back then, I desperately wanted to be a writer. Well, writer/doctor/actress/dolphin trainer, but I actually practiced the writer thing. The few stories from back then that I’ve found or remember writing make me incredibly happy. Clearly my mom’s independent spirit had rubbed off on me (I think I was too young to have developed an independent spirit of my own) because all my stories were about very determined young ladies. There was the one about the little girl living in the woods whose parents disappear, so she runs away from the now empty house to live on her own in a cave. Ok so maybe there was a plot hole or two but this cave she lived in was totally awesome. It had all these different rooms including one that could only be reached by a stone, trick wall-door thing (think the rotating bookcase in Indiana Jones Temple of Doom) that she could use as a panic room/escape hatch, and a room where the walls were all a wet clay-like substance (essential for making all her flatware and water jugs and shelves for the rest of the cave rooms). She also adopted a bear cub. Her parents were actually still alive and returned home to find their daughter missing but I’m not quite sure how it ends because I never finished it.
One winter around Christmas time my sister and I were with our dad scooping sand from the dry river bed into a big box to make our luminaries when I saw something really curious in a tree. It was on the bank of the dry river bed and the branches hung down to the ground and apparently made a cozy home for whatever awesome adventurer had their sleeping bag and all their treasures hidden underneath. When my dad explained that the tree was some homeless guys bedroom I started volunteering at the local homeless shelter and wrote another story. This one was about four homeless girls living together under a tree by a dry river bed. Apparently though I didn’t think that being homeless was bad enough, because I made one of them blind, one mute, one deaf and the last one had no legs. They sort of led each other around and worked together to solve their problems and the legless one got pushed in a Wal-Mart shopping cart. I never finished that story either. In fact, most of my stories end that same way. Clearly my heroines were much more determined than I was.
Reading though, reading is something I’ve always been completely passionate about. I still remember my favorite childhood book “But No Elephants” almost word for word. When I was little I refused to believe there was any book that was too old or mature for me. I read Clan of the Cave Bear (in which there are some very adult rape scenes) in fourth grade after three straight years of whining and trying to steal it off my mom’s shelf. The past couple of years I haven’t read much that wasn’t for a class, which I hate (especially because I’m a political science major). One of my New Years resolutions was to read for me more often this year. So far I’m doing pretty well with it, but lately I’ve preferred non-fiction to fiction. Reading fiction is starting to become like watching TV, I’m getting way too good at predicting what’s going to happen and I end up pissed off when I’m right. It’s possible I’ve just picked a bad couple of books, so I’ve decided to wait for some good recommendations (anyone?) and, in the meantime, try and write and maybe even finish a story or two.
As far as my writing abilities now, I’m clearly a big fan of run-on sentences and inadvertently spell words the English (as in
