We had to do an introductory paper for an English class about writing so the professor could learn our writing style and my professor asked us specific questions and this was the result. It relates to writing and the road and I hope some of you can relate.
Writing: A Life’s Journey
Since I first learned how to put words to paper, writing has been an important part of my life, and no matter what the circumstances, I have always been able to find a way to write. Paper is everywhere and nearly free. Pens can be found abandon in a parking lot or forgotten at the bus stop. A writer’s tools are compact, lightweight, and portable, allowing them to be utilized in virtually any environment. A writer can work from a park bench, or while sitting at an on-ramp, thumbing down the first diesel headed west. I have written from a Union Pacific box car and by campfire light in the Arizona desert. So, even a train tramp can find a way, and the means, to write.
I began actively writing on my seventh birthday when my grandmother gave me my first journal. I began writing in it right away and I still keep one to this day. In fact, my grandmother still gifts me a new one every year. As a kid I would use it as a way to escape the reality of my life by making up stories about people I had never met, or about places that did not exist. As I evolved and my vocabulary grew, my journal entries evolved too. I began to take in everything I experienced full tilt, and it was spilling over into my writing. This is when I learned how to use writing as more than just a creative outlet. This is when I learned that writing, for me, was a magical thing, and with it I could make magic.
At 73 years old, my grandmother is still an active part of my writing life. She refuses to get a computer and already thinks that TV’s and DVD players are complicated enough these days. So, the only way to stay in touch with her, besides talking on the phone, is by sending cards and writing letters. Both of us like to write, so every time we send a card it pains us to see all that empty space and we have to fill it up with something. On Halloween she might fill her card with a silly little poem about The Spooky Black Bat, whereas I might include a 700 word short story about an Alien Pumpkin Smasher. It is fun, and my boys are starting to exchange stories with grandma too.
In addition to journal entries and cards to grandma, I also enjoy writing both poetry and prose when I have a moment to spare between work, school and family. I finished my first novel (540 pages) when I was still in high school, and I have a second one in the works. I have had nothing published, but again, that is due to time restraints--I have never been able to figure out how other writers can market their work and find time to write it while still living their lives.
As a writer, my writing has brought me its fair share of success, frustration and disappointment. Hell, after the life I’ve lived every time I finish anything I celebrate it. There was a time when the only thing I could finish was a ‘number’. However, the final written paper I had to do for GEOG 111 last semester stands out clearest in my mind because I wrote the entire paper in six hours the day it was due and I received a perfect grade. The project I am most disappointed with right now is a personal project that has now gone six years uncompleted. I’ve written seven chapters, 342 pages, and it is close to completion. But again, it comes down to time. There’s barely enough time in the day to do what you have to do, let alone what you want to do; so my writing gets put off.
If I didn’t write I likely be a serial killer, car bomber or rooftop sniper. ‘Murder without consequence†is what I sometimes like to call it. If someone cuts you off in traffic, sleeps with your wife or kicks your ass at the bar, you can just create a character based on that person and have them tortured and killed. It sure beats 25-to-life. I think that is the biggest reason why I like writing so much, because it gives me an outlet that allows me to coddle to my madder self. It gives me the power to create my own world with my own rules and my own consequences. I decide the victor and the victim. The thing that I hate the most about writing is the great amount of time and effort it takes to be really good at it. Then, when the work is finished the journey still hasn’t ended because now you’ve got to sell it. If I focus on those things I end up having less time for my family and friends. But then it comes down to the fact that if I didn’t put that extra effort into it I’d probably be a much more hostile person.
My greatest strength is my ability to get the reader’s attention. I can write good hooks as well as good conclusions. I am also good at integrating my life-experience into all of the things I create. I have experienced things in my life that most people could never imagine in their wildest dreams, and I have been to places that most Americans don’t know even know exist here in America. It is my ability to look at the parts of the world around me, then express them to the world in a way that they can understand is my greatest ability as a writer. Most people will never find themselves hunkered down with their “ol’-man†in the back of a pick-up truck with two sleeping bags and a tarp thrown over you for warmth, as you drive through a winter-time mountain pass, and suddenly have a spark of inspiration hit and just have to start writing even if the road is bumpy and icy and the wind-chill is twenty-below. The emotion and reality of any situation can best be expressed in words if the words are written as the action occurs. No street musician I’ve even met would take out his implements of creation under such conditions; only a writer would do that.
My greatest weakness is, in larger works, like novels or short stories I have trouble with consistency in voice and sometimes with changes in voice from one character to the next. I also tend to show difficulty with the showing-instead-of-telling rule for prose. I don’t leave room for the reader to use his imagination. Not always, just when it comes to events for the things I have never actually lived though myself.
My academic goal is to earn a Ph. D. in Linguistic Anthropology: Mayan and Meso-American Cultures from the University of Arizona in Tucson. Their Anthropology Department is ranked fifth in the United States educationally and funding wise. After I get my degree I hope to find employment with the University of Arizona and possibly teach in the Spring and Fall, and go on research expeditions to Central America during the Summer. Writing is important to my academic goals because there is a possibility in my career that I will have to publish findings and research in the appropriate media. I may have to write grants and proposals, and there may come a time when I have to provide written instructions about some new Archeological procedure. No one really knows what the future of writing will bring to me, all I can do is prepare myself for whatever is next, be ready for anything, and take it as it comes; as with life.
