CornerScribe

Write about your FIRST TIME

…writing, that is.

I’ve been thinking about family stories and writing, and that led me, of course, to thinking about growing up. I was thinking about the first time I can really remember writing a story. I may have written before this, but if I did, I can’t remember. I know that this is the first time I really got into the “zone.” I saw and felt and experienced the story as I wrote it. I’m still a bit awed by the feeling even now. When I’m lucky enough for it to happen to me, it’s almost as if I’m channeling the story. Plots twist, characters misbehave, and the book takes on a life all its own. The result can be chaotic, but it’s also far more creative and surprising than I could create by planning it out.
I wrote my first story when I was in third grade, so I would have been eight years old. We were writing stories for school, and I had just read Call of the Wild. I sat down in my room, using the seat of one of our kitchen chairs for a desk, and started writing. My room was chilly, and I remember wrapping a little blanket around me as I worked.
My story was about a mother and child who are trapped in the wilderness in a blizzard with hungry, ferocious wolves circling outside. I can’t remember how it ended, but I still remember seeing the scene in my mind. Gray figures of the wolves paced against the white expanse of snow while the mother and child huddled inside the cabin, sneaking peeks through a cracked door.

I’m not sure how long it took, but my feet had gone to sleep by the time I’d finished, and I’d filled more pages than I had ever expected to. I remember the feeling of satisfaction when I finished the story, and how proud I was of it. I’m not sure if I realized it then, but I think that moment did more to make me want to write than anything else I can think of.

I suppose that’s why I write today. It can be difficult to feel a relationship with readers when I spend months working on a novel that no one but me has read. I plan, and hope, that others will one day read and enjoy it too, but the writing process can be quite lonely. The act of writing, of creating, of discovering the story is what keeps me at it.

What keeps you writing?