A while back, a co-worker suggested I read a book called The Gargoyle. I’m wary of recommendations from most people, because according to book sales, most people like Twilight. However, I decided to look it up on Amazon and read the reviews. As I was scrolling down , I was subjected to my greatest weakness: the handsome author picture.
This handsome author is Andrew Davidson. I haven’t even put his book in my cart yet (does that sound inappropriate?), but I like him. I know it’s not very discriminating of me, a writer, to base judgment of another writer on his wit and his looks. I should at least read his book first, right? It’s just that I found myself so amused by his account of how he became a writer. A couple quotes to motivate you to click the link and read the whole thing:
“Somewhere along the way, I managed to get a degree in English literature; this was strange as I thought I was studying cardiology.”
“I soon discovered, in no uncertain terms, that work is no fun. I stuck it out for as long as I could, which was way less than a lifetime.”
See, he’s a guy you’d want to invite to a dinner party, right?
He got me thinking about how many of us have stories like this – snake-like paths that lead us to writing. My strange story goes something like this:
When I was about eight, I wanted nothing more than to be a gymnast. I watched the movie “Nadia” about two hundred times. There was just one problem with my gymnastics career: I was scared to do gymnastics. I became more entertained by the idea of gymnastics and turned my obsessive energy to playing with dolls who, in my imagination, were gymnasts. I sewed them leotards, I narrated their routines like a sportscaster, I gave them stories. Soon, I gave them stories outside gymnastics – they had torrid affairs with boys at school and gossiped about their friends and disobeyed their parents. Some of these stories were so amazing, in my mind, that I had to write them down. A new ambition was born: I would be a writer – of books about gymnastics.
Much to my surprise, there are not that many stories to write about gymnastics, so my mind started to drift to other things. I won contests writing my own versions of fairy tales when I was in sixth grade. I started to write stories about people at school, about neighbors, about things I saw on TV. Then I started to just write about people who existed only in my mind. There was a brief phase when my parents probably wondered if I was mentally ill, but then they breathed a sigh of relief and decided that I was, but in an acceptable, writer way. I got baby name books for my birthday, to use when creating my characters. I started to draw pictures of the towns where my characters lived. I made lists of their favorites – flowers, foods, hobbies, whatever. To me, there was nothing more thrilling than creating entirely different worlds.
By high school, I was obsessed with Catcher in the Rye in a very unoriginal way. I started to copy the style of that book and, while copying, it occurred to me that I could write books, too. For fun, of course. In college, I was set on double-majoring in psychology and biology, an overambitious combination that I thought would make me a great genetic counselor, but really only made me fall head over heels into an existential crisis. It seemed only natural to write about this. That was my first book – a really bad, autobiographical one.
Still, writing seemed like what I was meant to do. I enrolled in the Master’s of Professional Writing program at USC, where workshops and deadlines led me to write more than I ever have. The stories were still mediocre, but I was just a twenty-three-year-old kid. Eight years later, I’m actually proud of most of the stories I write. Hopefully, one day, some of them will be out there.
What’s your story?
I told stories before I knew that what “storytelling” meant. We have gazillions of home videos of little me talking, narrating what I was doing, what I had already done that day, what my mom had done, etc. I learned to read when I was 4, and began to pour through books. I learned to write when I was 5 and shortly thereafter, under heavy influence of the Little House books, began to keep obsessive journals. Things went even more downhill when I read Little Women and Anne of Green Gables a few years later. Of all the characters in those books, I could identify most with Jo and Anne (which I think is the point) so of course I decided I was DESTINED to be a writer. I maintained this interest and identity until college, when I briefly tried to escape that destiny in favor of something more noble, then gave in to the fact that I am, and will always be, a writer 🙂
Great post!!!
So, I don’t have THAT type of a story, and I would actually consider myself to be a reader and definitely not a writer. I am okay with that – it’s like accepting a normal, mediocre, rather boring life. I’m not destined to greatness.
As a reader, however, I do love other people’s stories. I must have a major voyeuristic tendency, but that is another topic. And I love language and writing and playing with ideas.
I realize that this is your story about writing. I don’t normally read the Nobel Prize for literature winner’s acceptance speeches, but I did read through Mario Vargas Llosa’s speech this year, and it’s so much about the craft of writing and his inspiration(s) and about how we NEED fiction.
Not that you need a link, but here it is:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2010/vargas_llosa-lecture_en.html
Thanks, Kristina. I’ll check it out 🙂