When I became a writer: A bio of creativity

I started writing in third grade -- poetry, it turned out. My third grade teacher, Mrs. Kuh (an unpleasant sort for the most part) taught us poetry -- difficult, advanced poetry. Diamante and haiku and limericks -- although we were too young for the most amusing examples of the latter form, dirty limericks.

My first poem, a haiku:

Come here, small firefly.
Let me see your glowing light
shining bright and gay.

Note the six beats in the first line where there should be five. I didn't quite have the hang of haiku in third grade.  Blessedly, I do not remember my third-grade diamante.

In fifth grade, my mother unwittingly put me up to collaborate in plagiarism. My neighbor in high school had to write a poem for Mrs. Schobert's class, and his mom asked my mom to ask me to write a poem for him to hand in. I was scared not to comply, so I wrote him a poem. I earned an A on his poem, although Mrs. Schobert may have wondered why he wrote like a fifth grade girl.

In sixth grade, I wrote very amateurish stories about the guy I had a crush on. (He came out of the closet after graduation.)

I gave my junior high (Middle School for you youngsters) English teacher everything I wrote throughout seventh and eighth grade, because my mother didn't seem too interested in them. At the end of junior high, she returned them to me in a folder and told me to keep writing and to work toward getting published. Thank you, Miss Myers, for giving me a goal.

In high school, I took a creative writing class with Mrs. Schobert, who didn't recognize that my writing style looked like a high school boy's writing of several years before. I learned the very basic basics of everything -- diamante and haiku, descriptive writing, short stories, and playwriting. I wrote a short fantasy play based on a story my mother had told me about the year her family couldn't afford a Christmas tree. The reviews in my head ran: "A heartfelt but saccharine attempt to catch the magic of Christmas."

In college, I wrote many, many poems. Most of them related to the ups and downs of being in love. One of my exes, who broke up with me for a girl he met at a party, explained to his new girlfriend, "She wrote poems. I never understood them." After that, I wished I could pull off the Goth look to emphasize my feeling of being misunderstood.

My college poetry class almost killed my desire to write when the published poet who taught it lauded a student for her "original"  -- "like a moth to the light". On the other hand, he called my work "greeting card trash". My poems might not have been great, but how could I have improved them from that screed?  Mr. Guy Whose Name I've Forgotten, you created my hatred of being critiqued.

When I was in grad school, I dated a folksinger. (He hurt me badly; I kill him off in this current book I'm editing). He played a combination strum/fingerpicking style and composed beautiful, intricate pieces. He'd play around with a tune, and the following conversation would ensue.

         Me: I have a work in progress that would work with that tune.

         Him: How? It's 5/4 time with syncopation!
 
         Me: Try me ...

So we composed music and performed together, and we had a fan or two and earned $2.50 busking. More importantly, I got to sing about my heartbreak and trauma and crushes and people listened. Many had their favorites -- the most popular song was "World's Worst Blues Song," which is exactly as advertised. We married, we divorced, and I have a handful of songs I can't perform because I can't learn guitar and my voice (husky contralto) isn't what it used to be. So, Adam, thank you for helping me get my words heard. Do not, under any circumstances, contact me. I've killed you off, after all.

I didn't write novels until about five years ago. I couldn't comprehend writing novels because they required an extended and gripping plot, a certain amount of continuity for many, many pages, and attention span. (I may have ADHD. Never diagnosed, but watched carefully by the school district.)

But then I fell in love with a world and its characters. I first met them, I believe I said once, by interpreting a dream, then by interrogating the dream by questioning its characters.  I kept writing short stories about the same people and the same world, tracing the progression of their very strange relationship in a background of present-day spirit activity. Richard (my second and real husband) said, "You might as well write a book," and I wrote one. And then more, because I kept getting ideas about where this world and its people were going. Thank you, Richard, for appealing to my best self, the one who dares.

I am editing that first book for perhaps the third time. That first book has always seemed problematic, and I would fix things one at a time (search for places that needed more description, search for places that needed better verbs, etc.) and I still felt dissatisfied with it. For the past few days, I've dug deeper. I've culled sections that distract from the action and added more hints a là Chekhov's Gun. I've added more menace, more potential dire consequences for the protagonists and a foreshadowing into the next books in the series. I'm less shy about Josh and Jeanne's relationship (but still just as shy about the sex. I'm not a prude, honestly, just not happy about how sex ends up on paper).

Yesterday, I felt joy at ripping this novel apart and reassembling it. Joy from editing, from improving, from making this novel solid and not tentative, making it menacing and joyous.

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I felt like I could own the identity of "writer".

Thank you, all of those in my past and all of you in my present, for supporting me along the way.