Yes, I’ve grown and changed and experienced many things, but the older I get the more I realize that I am who I was when I was about eight-years-old. I started telling stories before I could read. My audience? Often just myself, but I did have some friends in my pre-school years who were willing to listen. It was around the age of eight that I became certain that I’d be a writer.
I wrote a terrible little “novel” about an elf. I don’t remember the plot and I’m almost certain that it lacked an actual story arc. Like many new writers, I thought I’d just create a character and the story would follow. That still happens to me, sometimes, and right now I’m finding that although the overarching story is one thing, the characters do grow and change and start to tell mini stories along the way. This past weekend many of the secondary characters in my current fiction-in-progress project, grew backstories that I had not planned! I’m pretty sure they are more nuanced and compelling than the elf’s tale, but… who knows. That manuscript is gone with the wind.
Since I started doing pottery (about two years ago) I’ve rediscovered drawing. It started with carving simple, cartoonish designs into my clay pieces and it’s grown since then. I’m not aspiring to great art, but I am getting more ambitious with my doodles and they are showing up on the clay as incrementally more sophisticated designs and on sketch pads done in colored pencil, ink pens and even some pastel crayons.
Drawing is part of getting reconnected with that little girl and it is turning out to be an interesting process. This time around I can sketch and fail to achieve the image in my mind and simply turn the page in the sketch book. I am who I was, but I’m more cognizant of what’s important and how NOT caring about the clarity of the sketch or quality of the clay mug is even more important than getting it right. That little girl expected to create perfect stories and pictures and to excel in everything even as she fought natural shyness.
I am who I was, but I’m growing up—finally!
Gorgeous photo! I’m terribly envious of your certainty though. I’ve daydreamed all my life, but it never occurred to me that I might be/become a writer. For me, it was always about teaching. I remember walking home from school with a friend, and I remember ‘explaining’ something to her in a very authoritative and logical way. Channeling my Dad perhaps? I’ve no idea what I was explaining, but I’ve always known I had a ‘knack’ for it. Probably explains why my first published book was a user guide.
Teaching still comes more naturally to me than fiction, and yet in a way, they’re both about communication and telling a ‘narrative’.
Speaking of story telling, do you pants? plot? or something in between?
Good teachers are always good storytellers. Creating a narrative, holding the audience, informing…. All good!
As for pants/plot…I have an overall idea (most of the time) and then I’m a pantser. Late last year I wrote something that was totally pantser. It’s in “cold storage” now so that I can approach it again with a fresh eye.