Many thanks to Kathi, one of my readers, for her comments on Facebook. She suggested that I write about my family stories and encourage others to so as well. They do get lost. Some are "lost" on purpose.
When I began writing, I was sure exactly what I was doing. I struggled with the typical questions -- Can I write? What would I write about? Why is editing so hard? Why does my butt keep going to sleep after sitting for two hours writing? So, I started with my imagination which runs on cheaper and more readily available fuel than my car. Too bad we can't harvest a writer's imagination to meet our fuel needs.
I have a great love of writing fiction, especially for kids. It was a good place for me to start. You can use simple words, simple structures, simple grammar. You can let your wildest fantasies run amok. And just have a good time watching it unfold. My characters tended to take over.
However, I have not tapped into another great fountain -- the family stories. At some point, I will have to take liberties, since I don't remember all the details. I wouldn't be the first in history. Oh, the stories I could and will tell. (I wonder if family can sue you? I'll check later.)
For example, in third person singular...
I'll start with a simple story about this one skinny little kid in the family. I barely remember him, but the photographs prove that he was real.
He had suffered scarlet fever as a baby and would sleep best when rocking back and forth in his wind-up swing. The kind with the old-metal-framed and fake leather seat. As he grew, he remained, according to his Grandma, painfully skinny. Enough so, that she would cry about it, fearing the worst at any moment, but he managed to survive. Dear god, how I miss that skinny kid, especially when he now appears in a full-length mirror and the reflection isn't the same as it was then.
This kid tended to be a loner. There weren't other kids of his own age in the neighborhood which consisted of a few newly-built houses. As the extreme youngest, his brother being 13-years older and his sister 11-years older, he found solitude in his sand box. A wood-framed square, filled with about a foot of grainy sand, and situated along the side of a typical 1960s ranch-style house. Built by his Father, it was not only a place of sand sculpting and imagination but it also marked a memorial for a dachshund named Daisy. She would be there watching over the skinny kid who attempted to tunnel his way to China since he had seen it in a Saturday morning cartoon and believed it to be possible. Invariably, a local feline would make use of the sand box, requiring a cleaning before the digging began. In the center stood a small maple sapling, that would eventually engulf the whole area.
His imagination was active, not just in the sand, but also in nature. Much to his mother's dismay, he experimented early on in cryogenics by freezing a dead dragonfly found on some afternoon romp. A glass baby food jar filled with tap water would eventually suspend the dead insect in the freezer in the garage. His mother wasn't as enthused as he was. After all, it was taking up valuable space in the freezer, but where else could you freeze something with hopes of bringing it back to life. He never thought about the later part, just preserving the body. He eventually would turn to Dr. Frankenstein in the 1930s movie to seek advice on that part. Sometime later, he would have to deal with the fact that someone had stolen his experiment while he was at school one day. The culprit remains a mystery to this day, or at least, his Mother said she never saw anyone come into the garage.
CSM
When I began writing, I was sure exactly what I was doing. I struggled with the typical questions -- Can I write? What would I write about? Why is editing so hard? Why does my butt keep going to sleep after sitting for two hours writing? So, I started with my imagination which runs on cheaper and more readily available fuel than my car. Too bad we can't harvest a writer's imagination to meet our fuel needs.
I have a great love of writing fiction, especially for kids. It was a good place for me to start. You can use simple words, simple structures, simple grammar. You can let your wildest fantasies run amok. And just have a good time watching it unfold. My characters tended to take over.
However, I have not tapped into another great fountain -- the family stories. At some point, I will have to take liberties, since I don't remember all the details. I wouldn't be the first in history. Oh, the stories I could and will tell. (I wonder if family can sue you? I'll check later.)
For example, in third person singular...
I'll start with a simple story about this one skinny little kid in the family. I barely remember him, but the photographs prove that he was real.
He had suffered scarlet fever as a baby and would sleep best when rocking back and forth in his wind-up swing. The kind with the old-metal-framed and fake leather seat. As he grew, he remained, according to his Grandma, painfully skinny. Enough so, that she would cry about it, fearing the worst at any moment, but he managed to survive. Dear god, how I miss that skinny kid, especially when he now appears in a full-length mirror and the reflection isn't the same as it was then.
This kid tended to be a loner. There weren't other kids of his own age in the neighborhood which consisted of a few newly-built houses. As the extreme youngest, his brother being 13-years older and his sister 11-years older, he found solitude in his sand box. A wood-framed square, filled with about a foot of grainy sand, and situated along the side of a typical 1960s ranch-style house. Built by his Father, it was not only a place of sand sculpting and imagination but it also marked a memorial for a dachshund named Daisy. She would be there watching over the skinny kid who attempted to tunnel his way to China since he had seen it in a Saturday morning cartoon and believed it to be possible. Invariably, a local feline would make use of the sand box, requiring a cleaning before the digging began. In the center stood a small maple sapling, that would eventually engulf the whole area.
His imagination was active, not just in the sand, but also in nature. Much to his mother's dismay, he experimented early on in cryogenics by freezing a dead dragonfly found on some afternoon romp. A glass baby food jar filled with tap water would eventually suspend the dead insect in the freezer in the garage. His mother wasn't as enthused as he was. After all, it was taking up valuable space in the freezer, but where else could you freeze something with hopes of bringing it back to life. He never thought about the later part, just preserving the body. He eventually would turn to Dr. Frankenstein in the 1930s movie to seek advice on that part. Sometime later, he would have to deal with the fact that someone had stolen his experiment while he was at school one day. The culprit remains a mystery to this day, or at least, his Mother said she never saw anyone come into the garage.
CSM
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