I am sitting here, before noon, gorging on Doritos and reading through some old writings.
I am in the midst of a massive cleaning. Just about every time the seasons change my mother get's furious with the clutter in our home and throws out the old. She will of course bring in the new. But for now until next weekend we are having an 'EVERYTHING MUST GO' sale.
Between handing off old clothes to my thinner friends and throwing my back out moving furniture, my family is sifting through the things we have collected. My mother has endless cuts of fabric, my father has shelves nearly buckling with war memorabilia, and I have stuff.
I have nail polishes, costume jewelry, model horses, half finished canvases, dented books, and papers. Lots and lots of papers.
In the boxes marked with my name I have found stacks upon stacks of short stories, novel ideas, and plays that are sure to never debut on Broadway. I do not think I am alone when I say how entertaining it is to find these clippings. As vain as it may sound, I have spent a few hours now pouring over my works. It isn't vain because I spent most of that time laughing.
I found diary entries where I wrote my woes of being oh-so-in-love with this boy and how his girlfriend must only be dating him to make me mad. I found dialog so bad that even I couldn't get through it, and I wrote it.
As laughable as pieces of this new found collection may be, there are a few diamonds in the rough. I see characters in this stack that have made it into my current projects. Stories that I wrote before I could drive, are stories that I am rewriting now.
Writing is a talent that must be learned, with years of reading and writing as practice. But that initial spark has to be there. You have to want it. And, with literal pounds of failed attempts, I am reassured that I was born to tell stories. No matter how many bad drafts, I will eventually get it right because of how badly I want it.
Photo Credit To: http://www.flickr.com/photos/striatic/
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