This post is the wonderful people in my life, both online and in the reality beyond my screen. Even if I don’t type your name- you’ve been thought of.
Just finished watching Julie & Julia and- wow. I absolutely loved it. I’d been wanting to rent it since I saw the preview, not because it’s a chick flick, not because it’s about cooking, not even because it’s a great story and a true one to boot. Nope, none of those reason.
It’s because it’s about two writers. Two writers who struggle. Two writers who write about their passion. That’s why I watched it but, amazingly, that’s not why I love it so much- though it certainly helped.
I loved it because of the focus on the people in their lives. The amazing husbands who unwittingly set them out on their journeys. The friends, both good and not so good, who were there for them. The family who was less than supportive at first but still a constant presence in some way. Of course, we can’t forget the cat either.
I love that. I love the people.
I love my people so much.
My bio mother was a writer of some sort. She wrote poems she was very fond of- some of which were quite good, but she never did anything with it. I can’t say if she ever tried but I really wish she would have. Her words had more potential and heart than I have ever known her to show in anything- and if you’re a frequent reader you’ll know that’s probably the first compliment I’ve ever written in her respect.
Ever since I was little I showed promise in both writing and art, not surprising since they’re the same side of the brain but somehow she missed that. She saw my art well enough, always telling me to sign my pictures even when I drew them on the back of homework we both knew I wouldn’t be turning in. She told her friends and had me demonstrate my abilities whenever the chance arose. Later, when I was fourteen she ever agreed to let me attend an art school even though it meant a dollar a day for the bus (and that was just one way).
She loved by artwork and pushed me to focus on it. As a good child I followed my parent’s lead, hitting high-school with the dream of becoming a graphic designer simply because it sounded the best way to make money in the field and as her child I somehow missed the same things she did…
Like how I wanted a plastic typewriter before I was seven and graduated to a ‘grown-up’ typewriter by the time I was eight- a monster of a thing that you plugged into the way and prayed it didn’t fall on you. Like how I saw on a milk-crate in front of the thing every single day after school. Like how wrote poems on the school bus and told myself bedtime stories.
Somehow we’d both missed that I signed up for as many English classes as Art. We missed that I couldn’t stand drawing on demand and failed Art class for lack of work and somehow managed to fail English class for the exact opposite reason- I’d spend twice as long on every project and then never turn it in.
We missed all that.
But my neighbors, and later my adoptive family, didn’t. The mom, my adoptive mom, L, was the very first person to read my first attempt at a novel. I had been working on it since I was twelve, printing it off when I was nearing fifteen and she read every single misspelled word and typo on 100 some odd pages.
It was one of the last months I lived with my mother before the shit hit the proverbial fan. I was testing her a lot though I didn’t realize it at the time. I had only just noticed she spent more time at the bar than she ever had in our own home and that even as she showed me off she didn’t actually talk to me. It was a long line of realizations that couldn’t be fixed.
One of my unwitting tests was to ask her to read my story. I’d asked her other things before- to play cards with me, the PlayStation, or once to help me with my homework. The answer was always no. Not because she was busy but just because. It’s difficult to explain but suffice to say she didn’t read my story. She never read any of my work aside from short poems and that hadn’t been for ages.
That wasn’t what led to my living with my adoptive family, that’s a much longer story, but it is what drove me away from art. L and I spoke for hours on end on the subject. Yes. I can draw and very nicely too but art is a lot of work for me. Could I ever do it for a job? No. Writing is a lot of work too but I’ve never once said ‘I’m too tired to write’ or ‘I don’t want to write right now,’ it’s just something I do.
Instead of me just doing it to pass the silence in my previous home they began making time for me to sit at the computer and type, reminding me every so often to take a damn break and eat something. All the note paper I could need was made available to me and when I’d squint at my own script someone put two and two together and asked if I’d ever worn glasses.
Once I was able to focus less on home life and more on life in general I discovered I wasn’t the only one who had characters in my head though I might have been the one most obsessed with it. Ni and Ju, girlfriends even back then, told each other stories all the time and I’m a firm believer it’s what makes them such a wonderful and connected couple. They fascinated me like you wouldn’t believe and if I’m honest- I still idolize them a bit… or more than a bit. They draw and write without any boundaries. They like the idea of doing something with their projects but they’re just that: projects. They come up with new ones all the time and enjoy them purely in the moment. One is never forgotten or abandoned, simply left to grown like mold in my fridge though the results are much more to my taste. ;)
Kei. Ah, Kei. I met her in that strange dreamlike period of my life as well. She is an artist who writes as I was a writer who drew on occasion. We both understood the compulsion, joys, and pains of either chosen craft and became friends instantly (See The Power of Quack). We would talk for hours about our characters. She would draw mine up for me, with her absolutely amazing talent that makes anything I draw look like stick figures, and I would help her ‘tune’ her writing. Nowadays I call her sister and we spend our days in front of our respective computers in the living room asking, every few hours ‘Can you look this over for me?’ or ‘What do you think of this?’ and our time at work listening to radio and saying ‘Oh, my gods, this song is so for such and such character’ and so on and so forth.
Then I have friends like Jessie who is no doubt reading this post. People I categorize with the extra special title of ‘writer buddy’ because though many of my other friends understand that I have random characters running around inside my head people like Jessie understand why I’m so obsessed with prying them out with pen and paper or the constant attention I show my keyboard. She’s one of those wonderful people I can spend time talking to about what’s the best way to write on the go and whether or not electronic publishing is going to be the death or salvation of our craft. The things I care about almost as passionately as PETA cares about wasting time on slogan creation.
These people enrich my writing life so much but there’s one more that takes the cake- or would if he was currently conscious.
Uber long post. See part two here.
Sorry about my absence, not that I think too many people noticed, but I went off on a sort of walkabout through the reality of my life. It’s funny, people often stress the line between what they do online and what they do in the world beyond their screens but the more time I spend away from my computer- a compulsion of late, the more I realize I’m not doing much different than what I do at the end of my keyboard.
Writer’s block.
I’m feeling something red.
You’d think I would have figured it out by now. Honestly.
