A Writer?

Let me start out by saying that I'm a writer. No, that's wrong. I used to be a writer. I was a writer when I was 12, and when I was 17, and most of the years in between. I haven't been a writer since I was 17, and I'm almost 23 now. The problem with my writing then wasn't that it was bad and I got discouraged. The problem with my writing then is that I get discouraged now by how good it used to be and how good it now isn't.

You see, when I was 14 I was struck by sudden inspiration. When I say struck by sudden inspiration, I mean Mozart and Beethoven would have been jealous of the kind of inspiration I had. I developed an outline for my Magnum Opus when I was fourteen years old, and I had the entire story spring into my mind, fully formed, without any effort or thought. The only effort was going to be how to write it down.

It was an epic tale of a dispossessed son of a king who had been ousted from the throne by his evil uncle who intended to slay the entire royal family but missed one, raised by foster parents and befriended by a druidy-wizard-person who didn't ever seem to be anything more than a family friend. There were Elves, there were men, there were outlaws, there were dragons and demons and orcs and everything a fantasy novel could ever want, including a Big Evil Bad who was actually pulling the strings behind the evil uncle and the evil uncle thought he was doing the right thing, so there was even actual plot depth and political intrigue. To my knowledge at the time, it was original. It still, even after all of these years, looking back on it, was mostly original. I took inspiration from things, but it was still my story, it was something new and fresh and exciting.

I started work on it with a fervor. I was homeschooled, and being the youngest of six and a little more privileged than my older siblings, I had my own computer. I would work on my story when I was supposed to be doing math, or writing reports or research papers. I worked on it after I was finished with school for the day, I worked on it when I would normally have hung out with my friends. I would sneak in to work on it during times when I was supposed to have been outside doing some sort of yardwork-like chore. It didn't matter. If I thought of something that needed to be added, I would run in and add it.

I was a writer, then. I knew that if I got in trouble I could just display my work and then everyone would understand that this was the one thing that I should be doing more than anything else. It was my Golden Ticket, my Anduril, my father's lightsaber.  This was the turning point, the key in my life, the one thing to make me successful.

I had a fan following of approximately 250 people on a forum I visited often. I had a secured, copyright-protected (via the website) version stored on their server and could post excerpts from the story in the forum. I had notebooks full of information and research and notes pertaining to the nine-novel-long story.  I had sent excerpts to several publishers, at least two of whom had responded with positive encouragement and feedback, if not commitment and confirmation.

I had the first thirteen chapters of the first book written out by hand in a notebook as a rough draft, and I had the first twenty-six chapters of the first fifty-two chapter novel in edited, finalized form, saved on my computer, ready to be printed off as a manuscript.

I saved a copy of it on a 3.5 floppy disk, and sent it to my best friend, who, at the time, was also my girlfriend.  She made some editing notes, and sent it back. Neither one of us had cars and we lived more than an hour apart, but we both had parents who had stamps and envelopes. We mailed that floppy disk and a hard copy back and forth repetitively...until we broke up.

This came at an incredibly bad time, which rapidly became worse. I'll get to that in a moment. The reason it was such an incredibly bad time was that not only was my best friend/currently-ex-girlfriend spending a lot of time with her slightly older, much more devious and underhanded other best friend, but both the floppy drive and the hard copy were currently in her possession.  Neither copy has been heard from in years.  The last report was "I think I destroyed them. I'm sorry, I was a stupid vindictive kid."

Sometimes I wonder why we dated three more times and are still close friends...

Here's the worse:  My hard-drive fried a week later. I was immediately concerned for the wellbeing of my immense project, but was relieved at the time because I still had one floppy disk with the story on it, only missing two chapters from the so-far finalized version. No big deal, I could write those up from memory. The floppy disk broke in my family's only permanent relocation in my lifetime. The story was gone, except for the copies possessed by my best friend. I thought I'd get them back. Oh, how naive I was. No, there's more, keep reading.  The site on which I had posted excerpts and had stored a relatively secure copy of the story crashed and then the owners decided it wasn't worth the trouble and money to maintain the website and forum.

It was gone. Over three years worth of constant, hard, determined, fiery passion, obliterated, in a single week-long series of unfortunate events.

This is where I would like to mention that I absolutely hate Christopher Paolini.  Not only is our story almost identical except where mine ended in a burning fiery ball of death and pain, his ended in shining success, but one of his characters has not only a name that I made up for one of my characters by picking random letters from an alphabet list with my eyes closed, but also has the same personality.  C'est la vie.

This story is why I am not currently a writer. I try to be, I think like I am, I even say I am, but when it comes down to it, I'm not. And I'm not, because when I try to start something to write, even my previous attempts at blogs, I get to thinking about the Darkblade Chronicles and the Lightbringers of Arendor and I want to cry.

Here's where it comes down to it, though. I always come back to writing. I can't get away from it, and it is the thing that calls out to me most. I play guitar, I sing, I can dance a little. I'm not bad at crafting things with my hands, but when it comes down to it, this is my art. I am a wordsmith, and I can craft my meandering river of sensations into coherent thoughts with but the stroke of a pen or the click of a key.

Writing is my passion, and my art. I can do nothing else.  I have learned that sometimes instincts can be overcome, and sometimes they cannot. This is one that cannot. I am forever drawn to the written word, the turning page, the scrolling bar, the smell of a library. It speaks to my soul.

While I may not be a writer currently, in the sense that I am not working my craft on a current project, writing is a part of who, and what, I am. Therefore, I am, always and forever, a writer.

Welcome to Eruandil's Ring.