How it all began: There were some benefits to not having easy access to media while I was young. During my first years in life, my family didn't even own a television, and when we did, we only had one we had to share. Going to movie theaters was out of the question, since my parents were using all of their finances to take care of our needs. As a result, my siblings and I learned at a very young age how to entertain ourselves. It was absolutely fun.
My siblings were great at coming up with games we played among ourselves as well as with our neighbors, many who were close to the same age. Hide and go seek in the dark that we did in our basement was one of my favorites. Basically, everyone had to find a spot in the basement to hide, all the lights were turned off, and the person who was it had to go throughout the whole basement with a flashlight to try to find someone.
The older siblings were often left to babysit while the parents were out, and I remember a few times when we sat together and entertained ourselves by reading Peanuts Gang books on tape. I still have a few of those recordings. My brother picked that up in later years. He is also creative and chose to use his creativity through technical channeling. He and I would spend time putting together stories. I helped him read the scripts while he put together the music and sound effects--all the techy stuff--to complete it. I have a few of those recordings also. It was a good thing they got in my hands, because he would have erased them years ago.
This wasn't limited to the immediate family. I had cousins on my mom's side who were around my age, and we played stories all the time. One of my cousins had a "thing" about Annie at one time, so we played it many times, and somehow I always ended up playing Miss Hannigan. That was played for some time until the story began to get old, so I started creating new characters. Mrs. Tuttle was the first one I created, and she was the nice orphanage keeper who preceded Miss Hannigan. More keepers were added on to that, but if you asked a family member these days what they remember about this, they would remember Mrs. Tuggle, a name that my cousins actually came up with, but I created the character. The final result ended up having absolutely no resemblance to the story originated from, except perhaps that Miss Hannigan survived the process.
My dad's side of the family had a different means of entertainment. They were more into skits, and I remember becoming part of a skit or two in front of the family (my most prestigious one being the midget skit when I was the face and feet while someone else was the hands). I remember my siblings and I doing a few skits in front of our own cousins once, as well as a play we did together (come to think of it, we did that play in front of my maternal cousins also).
Speaking of performing skits and plays, that was one of the best memories my sisters and my brother made together during our childhood. We had a large room in the back of our house and my brother took it into his hands to build an actual stage--with dressing rooms--in that room. He had also written a play entirely on his own that we were to perform, originally supposed to be based on the characters from the Beverly Hillbillies--at one point came up with the great idea to get my little disabled brother be Jethro. That didn't last long though. The script was completely rewritten to what we now know as Sara's Sore Toe, a silly story about a girl who stubs her toe at school and ends up in the hospital (originally was supposed to die from it, but I think that was changed). We performed that play on the stage in front of our grand audience of one (our mom). Great memories
Discovering creative writing: I have a story I wrote in second grade, but it was clearly just a rehashing of some story I was already familiar with. When I think back at the time when I began to do my own thing, I think back to 3rd grade, when apparently a leprechaun broke into the classroom and reeked havoc on the place. I still remember the green footprints painted on the window to the room and trails everywhere in the room with the desks scattered everywhere. It was a complete mess, but in the end, the teacher asked us to write a story about the leprechaun. I don't remember what I wrote or even if it was a good story or not, but it was from that point that I remember creating stories about a numerous amount of things. First thing I remember doing after that was taking a poem I had seen in my sister's writings, and rewording it to make fun of a boy in class (and shared it with my friend who thought it absolutely hilarious). I also wrote a story making fun of two other boys who claimed to have a crush on two girls in the class. My friend thought that was hilarious too. Needless to say, whenever I played with her, I was usually the instigator. She would bring a toy (I remember one time it was a troll) and I would come up with a story to play out.
The first time I tried a hand at poetry that I remember it was for a fifth grade assignment. I felt a little proud of the poem--can still recite it to this day--but wasn't sure how good it was since no commentary was made on it:
Snow is falling on the ground
Falling, falling without a sound
The flakes are so snowy white
They glitter and glisten in the light
It really wasn't until the next year in sixth grade and after that I started getting comments from my teachers about my writing ability. All of my English teachers recognized my creativity and several made positive commentary on my writing. I didn't quite catch on to what they were trying to say until I reached ninth grade and my English teacher that year was so completely complimentary that it was difficult to ignore it. In fact, she was the one who recommended me to the Honors English class for the next year with the hopes that I would continue developing my creative and writing skills, and she left a message in my yearbook that year that to this day is still a treasure to me and a reminder of what I am capable of:
I experimented with writing throughout high school and discovered the art of writing poetry. I was always scared of it before, believing I couldn't do it, but when you submit a poem into the Literary Magazine and they give you the Editor's Choice Award, it's no longer possible to claim you can't do it.
Creative writing today: Being able to write often proved beneficial in college classes, and I was delighted I chose a major that used a lot of writing in place of typical final examinations. It even proved useful for the non-major classes. I had one professor who told us to do a final project--anything we wanted--based off of a topic in the class, so I chose to write a children's story. I brought the story to him and he complimented me by saying he'll be looking for my stories on the bookshelf. I had another professor I took creative writing from who is a published author. It was a little more difficult to please him. For some reason, he had difficulty in grasping the reality of bullying, which I had included in the story, but overall he was quite complimentary on my efforts.
Even with all of this, and people I knew who encouraged me, I hesitated with the idea of making a book out of them. I wasn't interested in the money. I only like sharing them with people who I knew would enjoy them. It wasn't until after a cousin of mine made a family book from a self publishing company that I started considering it. He gave me the company name and I looked into it. I found to my delight that from the beginning to the end, I had a hand in creating the book entirely on my own. As a first attempt at making a book, I collected favorite poems I wrote from the time I started writing them, collected a few photos I had taken, and made it. The result:
I have since made two other books, one was written as a challenge to try to write a novel sized story starring neighborhood children, and the other was a challenge to see if I could do a series (still working on that) created entirely from my imagination:
