Sunday, June 15, 2014
Tortured Writer
When I was little I wanted to be a writer. In the fifth grade I was writing my first great novel in a blue notebook. It was about the life and times of a chicken struggling to make it in the human world. I borrowed elements of the story from movies I had watched or books I had read. Most specifically it was sort of a Look Who's Talking remake as that was one of my favorite movies at the time.
Around 6th or 7th grade, my next great novel was titled Illinois Jones and the Temple in his Room. It was a pretty ridiculous take on Indiana Jones. It had very little dialogue because I remember being unsure of how to insert it into a story. All the action happened "suddenly" or "all of a sudden." I'm pretty sure 90% of the paragraphs started this way.
In the 7th grade I had a poem published in some school hand out. I was pretty proud of that. My poetry was pretty formulaic. It was just four line stanza that rhymed every other line. I think it something to do with Christmas.
In high school I wrote a lot of parodies aimed at making fun of my high school English teacher. We had an assignment once to create a brochure of some kind about local travel or something similar. She gave me an incomplete grade on the assignment because my brochure was so well written she thought I had plagiarized it. I then made it my mission to make fun of her in every story I wrote for her class.
In college I took some creative writing classes. I mostly wrote short funny stories again that were parodies of my various life experiences. I again wrote a story making fun of the professor because I felt she was more of a hard ass than she needed to be. And again I got an incomplete grade on that assignment this time because it was against class policy to write about people in the class in any sort of negative light.
Since college I've had it in the back of my head that one day I should sit down and write a novel. I think the problem is though, that I'm not a tortured writer. I live a good life. I have no interesting life altering conflicts in my life and apparently I'm not creative enough to think of any. How can you get into the mind of a flawed character when you yourself have no story worthy flaws? Or maybe I do, I just don't know how to identify and write about them. I think I might be okay with that. Better to live a happy life than one that would be interesting to read about, right?
Around 6th or 7th grade, my next great novel was titled Illinois Jones and the Temple in his Room. It was a pretty ridiculous take on Indiana Jones. It had very little dialogue because I remember being unsure of how to insert it into a story. All the action happened "suddenly" or "all of a sudden." I'm pretty sure 90% of the paragraphs started this way.
In the 7th grade I had a poem published in some school hand out. I was pretty proud of that. My poetry was pretty formulaic. It was just four line stanza that rhymed every other line. I think it something to do with Christmas.
In high school I wrote a lot of parodies aimed at making fun of my high school English teacher. We had an assignment once to create a brochure of some kind about local travel or something similar. She gave me an incomplete grade on the assignment because my brochure was so well written she thought I had plagiarized it. I then made it my mission to make fun of her in every story I wrote for her class.
In college I took some creative writing classes. I mostly wrote short funny stories again that were parodies of my various life experiences. I again wrote a story making fun of the professor because I felt she was more of a hard ass than she needed to be. And again I got an incomplete grade on that assignment this time because it was against class policy to write about people in the class in any sort of negative light.
Since college I've had it in the back of my head that one day I should sit down and write a novel. I think the problem is though, that I'm not a tortured writer. I live a good life. I have no interesting life altering conflicts in my life and apparently I'm not creative enough to think of any. How can you get into the mind of a flawed character when you yourself have no story worthy flaws? Or maybe I do, I just don't know how to identify and write about them. I think I might be okay with that. Better to live a happy life than one that would be interesting to read about, right?
