Again, this is my intellectual property and if anyone steals it bad things will happen.
I guess I got into writing because no one had written the
specific stories I had wanted to read. I
remember wishing when I was about thirteen, that I could just watch my own
thoughts in my head like a movie. It
seems like I’ve got stories inside of me that I just really want to experience,
and I have no other alternative than to write them myself. I’ve heard other writers talk about how their
stories take a hold of their brain and rattle around until they are exorcised
in print, like demons of the imagination.
That’s not the case with me. My
characters don’t torture me, they are my toys, my vehicles for escape and
self-expression. When the going gets
rough it’s easy to slip your mind into a different skin and exert energy on
their problems, things that can’t possibly hurt me.
What I’m
really talking about here is fiction writing—apparently that’s what’s most near
and dear to me. It seems more genuine in
a way, less presumptuous than creative non-fiction (which I do like if I’m
feeling chatty), more coherent than poetry, and less boring than regular
non-fiction. When I think of “writing” I
think of storytelling.
I am
engaged in a multi-media storytelling experience. I draw pictures of my characters, pick out
certain songs that go along with their stories, I think of colors and aesthetic
notions that belong with certain stories.
For example, my serial-killer story (think Mickey & Mallory Knox)
has serious psychological leanings in the narrative, is red and grey and black,
and goes along with Marilyn Manson. If
it was a movie, it would have a patched-together documentary feel.
I feel
like I have the potential to explore my stories in all these media, it’s just
that some are more challenging and practical than others.
I probably
would be an actor if I had the self-confidence.
I would probably direct movies or TV if I had the social skills to
coordinate that many people without my head exploding, or the desire to learn
nit-picky things about cameras. I’d be a
painter if I had the patience to learn advanced techniques or the money to
spend on supplies. Writing is the
easiest tool I have to get my stories out there. Not necessarily for other people (recognition
is nice), but probably just for myself.
I don’t
adore language, I’ve never opened a dictionary of my own volition before, the
musicality of poetry doesn’t send me into thralls of literary ecstasy. I missed that memo, I just don’t get it. But, somehow, I’ve never really worried if I’m
in the wrong profession.
I’ve had a pretty non-challenging
literacy experience. The McKays—my father’s
line—are almost all engaged in creative activities, most commonly writing. They’ve published books of poetry and
memoir. I didn’t learn about that until
I started sharing bits of my writing with my father, so it’s not like I felt I
had to follow in anyone’s footsteps. I
was just going my own way, and then I found out that many of my ancestors have
gone the same way. That’s a nice
feeling; maybe writing is in our genes.
Nobody's ever told me that I can't
write or that I shouldn't write. That's probably why I'm still here.
My parents never told me that I'd never be able to support myself with a
B.A. in Writing, they just encourage, heavily hint, and otherwise pester me to
look into journalism and technical writing. They know that I'm not cut
out for that starving artist shtick.
We have the money to send me off to
school to learn a skill that doesn’t provide an instant financial payoff (or
perhaps any payoff). I was expected to
go to college, so I was groomed in the public school system so that I could
become a good candidate for acceptance.
There was a prestige level that I wanted—if I had really tried, or tried
at all—a fancy name on my diploma would’ve been nice. I would never have wound up at some
underfunded community college. I was
always expected to aim higher than that.
I’m not sure how far I’ve actually gone.
It’s hard to see yourself as attending a prestigious school when you
share the TCAT with kids from Cornell.
Maybe my perception of IC is colored by that. I’m not sure.
Anyway, I’ve had a supportive
family, and that’s a big deal. They read
me bedtime stories, gave me art supplies and music lessons. It’s important not to get a raison d’etre stomped out of you when
you’re growing up. They never forced me
back into sports after I said I didn’t like the competition of a soccer game—I
was in kindergarten, and far more likely
to watch a butterfly float above the grass than to pay attention to where the ball
was. They never forced me back into
ballet lessons at the local YMCA after I decided I didn’t like that
either. Music lessons though, were
non-negotiable. I actually never asked
why. Maybe because it was the practicing
that I really had a problem with—the act itself, of playing music, was
fun.
My high school was okay. They did their jobs in getting me tons of
college credit before I even graduated, I took AP courses and tests, got an
Advanced Designation Regents degree, and blah, blah, blah. It’s the same old college rat-race.
I had room for electives, sort of—at
the expense of my only study hall. I
took Orchestra and Art, all four years.
I continued French because it would look good to colleges. I had always wanted to take the half-semester
Creative Writing course that our high school offered. There was never any room in my schedule for
it—the resource existed, but it was always a little bit out of reach. I remember my mother telling me that if I
took all these courses in high school that I’d be able to take whatever I
wanted in college. She was right.
The kids in that Creative Writing class
were the ones who decided what got in to the high school Lit. Mag. I really wanted to be in the Lit. Mag. I had a vision of teachers’ smiles as they
finally were presented with some writing that I cared about, something that had a piece of soul in it.
I submitted some poems. A set of three versions of the same poem, a
triptych. I mixed visual art and poetry
and also old-timey vampires. I thought
it was a genius idea.
I never got published. That stung.
I went back to them and asked for the copies of my pieces they’d need
for review back. I don’t remember if I
cried—I think I just got pissed. Looking
back, I think that they didn’t got what I was trying to do. Maybe they didn’t like vampires that weren’t
love-struck and sparkly. They did
however, like angsty poetry about the problems of being a teenager that hinges
on an extended metaphor about grocery shopping.
I thought it was a boring, whiney poem.
I’m not bitter.
Anyways, so that was my only
experience with creative writing in high school and it was thoroughly
disappointing.
So I came, full of hope, to IC. I’m here because it’s fairly local, and it
has a Writing Department. I didn’t even
know that those existed until I found the one here. At the other colleges I could’ve gone to,
Creative Writing was a sad subset of the English major, or it didn’t
exist. So, in the end, my college
choice, the big agonizing choice was a no-brainer.
Now I’m here, and now I have the
best example of how undernourished my writing knowledge actually was. When I got into Intro to the Essay (which I
only took because it’s required) I learned about the existence of the Creative
Non-fiction genre.
Wait, what? Non-fiction isn’t just boring
book-documentaries? There is a world
outside of textbooks? Nobody had told me
that essays weren’t anything different than the crappy things we wrote in
English class, or in frantic, formulaic brain-dumps on Important Tests.
Totally blew my mind. Completely
changed my idea of what writing is, and can be.
That’s probably what smacks me in the face as the biggest thing I’ve quantifiably
learned in college. There are, of
course, lots of other things, but I find that learning a craft is a more
amoeba-like process. You extend tiny
tendrils of understanding out into the world.
Or they connect things that previously didn’t seem related. I’ve been a student for almost as long as I
can remember and I’ve only just realized that I have never really thought about
what true learning—not just information memorization—really is.
I have no idea why the font changed. I've attempted to fix it, but it's not working.
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