I
remember the first book I tried to write and illustrate. It was a Halloween story with ghosts. I could draw ghosts, thus the topic. And that was the last time I tried to illustrate
anything. Second grade, if my memory
holds true. Art has never been my strong
point.
When
I was around 12 years old I saw Aliens
on TV (maybe I’ve shared this story before—like I can remember). It scared me to death—seriously, I was
huddled on the bing-bag chair in the exact middle of our family room, making
sure my arms and legs did not breach the imagined bubble of protection that I
had around me and hardly daring to breathe—but it also intrigued me. The military characters, and the way they
stuck together like a team, drew me in, and I couldn’t stop watching. The next day I started writing a similar
story using my friends as characters. I probably still have a notebook
somewhere with this stuff in it. It should
be burned.
But
that is how I started my journey in writing.
I wanted to write a story cooler than Aliens so people would read it and feel the same way that I did at
the end of that movie. Although I’m
pretty sure I decided that I would never kill almost everyone in a story I
wrote. And it took me years to figure
out that the reason they didn’t leave anyone on the ship in space is because
there would be no story otherwise. There
need to be good reasons for these things people, especially when a 12 year old
is asking the question.
Dave
Farland is a big voice on the topic of story is emotion. I’m with him on this. A story that stirs the recipient will stick
with that person, and they will tell their friends about it because it was cool
and they’re dying to share. Story is
about emotion, and my very first goal with writing was to produce something
that struck people as hard as Aliens struck me.
I’ve
never done it, I don’t think, but I’ve come a long way, and I don’t plan to
stop anytime soon.
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