Writing

If you ask Mom, I have been writing since I could hold a crayon. I don't remember it. I know that I took to handwriting well. The mechanics of holding a pencil, making the dots, bars, lines, and loops, and the connections between printing and cursive came easily to me. Creating a story, though...

I remember going out of my way to write during the school year after that refrigerator box of books arrived at my home. I was obsessed with reading at the time. When I was invited to join a writing group, I jumped in thinking we'd be writing books. Not so much the case as it happened. I joined a club called Power of the Pen. It was a competitive writing club. The kids competed against each other during each meeting, writing to a prompt in a short time frame following a set of rules (ex. don't write outside the box). Later in the year, we went to a meet where we competed against other kids from other schools. The winners got trophies and ribbons. Our essays were judged on a scale of 1-5 based on grammar, spelling, answering the prompt, creativity, etc.

I don't remember getting higher than a 2 on anything except creativity. I remember a 4 once in creativity. It was disheartening. I didn't want to write essays. I did that in school. I wanted to write books. Books! Glorious books! After one particularly awful showing, and snappy hateful words by the teacher leading the group, I decided I would never be a writer and left the group. That was in 8th grade.

In 10th grade, one of my friends decided that she was going to be a writer. She wrote poetry. I'm pretty sure I got an itch up my butt and decided that we were going to be writers together. I tried to write poetry like she did. She was pretty good. I was definitely not. I understood rhyming. I wasn't as up to scale on similes,  metaphors, idioms, and other figures of speech that made up a large part of my friend's early poetry. She used symbolism and alliterations and allegories. I used Shel Silverstein as my compass. Oops.

I remember asking my French teacher (who was also an English teacher) to read over the rough draft of one of my poems. It was a very visual depiction of... what I can't remember. Maybe it was an asthma attack? I remember the line "flopping on the ground/lips flopping open like a dying fish" and writing tough as tuff, rough as ruff, and enough as enuff. This woman hated the poem and she wasn't nice about it. She pointed out that my simile was stupid (like a dying fish). I didn't tell her I wasn't trying to write a simile. She pointed out that my "ironic" misspelling of tough, rough, and enough wasn't actually ironic. I didn't do it for comedic effect or irony. It was pointless to ask her what irony meant. This was before digital spell check and I just didn't know how to spell those words. She told me that the entire concept was ridiculous and that I needed a new hobby. Yeah, that was a teacher. Ah, the good old days.

It seems like, from early on, I kept returning to writing in a cycle of high hopes, dismal attempts, crushing failure, and utter contempt for the art. It took a very special (or stubborn, whatever) man to bring me back to writing in a serious manner. I was 18 when I met Steven at a bookstore at the mall. He was the manager then. It was through his friendship, advice, and support that I finally found the courage to try writing again. I was hesitant, resistant even, but over a period of years, I finally accepted that the universe has always meant for me to be a writer. Not short essays penned to the tune of a writing prompt. Not poetry. Books, yes. Novels! It only took 1/4 of a century, but I can now proudly say to the nonbelievers: I am a writer, dammit!

Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS

Reading

I have written before about my first memorable experience with reading. It was the summer between 6th and 7th grade. It was before I discovered that some boys were attractive. It was during a very emotionally tumultuous time in my life. Mother Nature and I fought very bitterly over my body. My brother and I fought just as bitterly over why, all of a sudden, normally activities like jumping on the trampoline and going swimming were out of the question [for me]. For the record, my brother just didn't understand. Mother Nature, however, is just a bitch.

A friend of my mother's needed to unload a refrigerator box full of books. I was a good student so she assumed I liked to read. Until then, I read what I had been required to read without complaint, but never for fun. This woman brought this box of books to me. That box changed my life.

I was so desperate to escape my own life that once I cracked the cover on the 1st book, it was a done deal. I started with the easy stuff [aka age appropriate]. GOOSEBUMPS books were popular then and I found a few in the heap. "CHOOSE YOUR ADVENTURE" books were next. I always cheated by reading every page option before making a choice, yet somehow my character still always died. After that, I moved onto NANCY DREW. That chick could do anything! I read every single one of the Nancy Drew books, something around 50 of them, in the box and found a handful of Hardy Boys books too.

By the end of the summer, I only had a few books left in that box. Most didn't look like something I'd read. The men didn't wear enough clothes. Neither did the women for that matter. Instead, I picked up one called FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC. The cover made me think it was a horror story.  I guess I was partly right. The story probably traumatized me- or at least, it was responsible for good portion of nightmares. I read the entire series.

After V. C. Andrews, I decided to give the Harlequin romances a chance. I blame them, 100%, for my terrible taste in men, my unrealistic views on beauty and love, and my penchant for erotica.

Despite all of this, to this day my most beloved book is NOT NOW SAID THE COW, a reworked version of "The Little Red Hen" folk tale. I bought the children's book at a Scholastic book fair during Junior High. For years, I remembered the story but not the title until a student jogged my memory a few weeks back. Little Golden Books published a version of THE LITTLE RED HEN that the classroom library had and my student chose to read aloud. I knew then that my story was based on this story. After speaking to a couple teachers during lunch and multiple Google searches on our parts, we finally discovered the title I had been missing for almost 20 years. The reunion almost made me cry.

For such a little thing, a book elicits powerful emotions and memories. Some fond, some not so much, but always strong and honest reflections of time and place, real and imagined and remembered.

Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS

Friday Five: Favorite 2011 Memories

I hope everyone is enjoying the last Friday of 2011. If you are getting ready to party tomorrow night, please remember to stay safe and keep it all in moderation. If you can't remember it, then how can it be any fun later on? Yeah yeah. Speaking of memory, that leads me to today's Friday Five. My favorite memories of 2011!

1. My brother got married in September! Yeah! Go bro! Maybe my sister-in-law can muzzle him and keep him grounded. :)

2. I finally "officially" moved back to Ohio in August. I live in the south since 2003. It was time to come home for a while.

3. I got my first e-reader in October. I have since downloaded about 600 free books and games. I intend to read them all at some point!

These last two were harder to come up with...

4. Occupy events started in September. I'm sad that it has come to demonstrations and civil disobedience, but I am very happy to keep the memory of Americans finally waking up in my mind.

5. Gay marriage legalized in New York in July. I am very, very happy that my friends in New York are legally entitled to marry their partners, but I really hate that it has come to be court cases and such over the issue. Up until 1996, there was no "definition" of marriage. Why do we need one now? The neighbor's marriage has no merit on someone else's. So yes, just like in 2004, 2008, 2009, and 2010, I am happy about the legalization, but I am still disappointed that people cannot see beyond their own egos to get over themselves and mind their own business.

Here is to a very Happy New Years to you. Stay safe. Have fun. Ring in the new year surrounded by those you love!

Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS

Friday Five: Holiday Memories

I figured today's and the 30th's Friday Five could be about memories. Today's is my favorite Holiday Memories over the years. Next week, I'll list my favorite memories for 2011. :)

1. I've mentioned this before but my favorite holiday memory is the homemade Christmas ornaments my grandmother made over the years. We put them on the tree this year and I boohooed for a good bit after.
2. In 2005, I spent New Years with  my parents, my brother, two of my brother's friends, and a friend of mine. None of us thought to pick up alcohol. It was my first New Years after I turned 21. A neighbor gave us corn whiskey that resulted in a 6 hour tape of us singing a karaoke version of Cheeseburger In Paradise and Fins over and over again. Never again but it was hilarious.
3. When I was 16, I rang in the New Year with girlfriends from high school. I was introduced to the comedy of Eddie Izzard that night and an obsession was born. I still love the guy.
4. I may have the year wrong, but we had a blizzard in 1993 where the snow drifts ended up higher than I was tall. I was around 9 then so it may have been 4 foot drifts, but still. I remember making an igloo, several dozen snowmen, and sledding in the neighbor's field.
5. Christmas 2008 is my favorite for one simple reason. I graduated from college in December 2008 and Christmas was my first holiday with a degree. It was awesome knowing I didn't have to go back in January, that I could focus on work finally.

I could come up with a dozen more favorite memories but I have to help wrap presents tonight so I'll leave it here. What is your favorite memory during the holidays? Tell me in the comments below!

Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS

Friday Five: Favorite Holidays

I'm not sure why I have holidays on my mind right now. It serves for a good Friday Five though. My top five holidays:

Easter. I am not particularly religious and I don't claim affiliation with any specific denomination, group, council, sect, whathaveyou. Easter is my favorite holiday though for one specific reason. As a child, I didn't spend much time with my natural father's family (long story for another time). I missed a lot of holidays with them, but I always spent Easter with my Grandma. And Easter was almost as exciting as Christmas for me as a kid.

As an adult, I hold Easter above Christmas specifically for the memories I have of my grandmother. Easter egg hunting, the "treasure" blanket, and salami roll ups always jump at me. The "treasure" blanket is memorable because Grandma had many, many grand kids and so was not able to buy a lot of stuff for us. At Easter, she set out a number of toys and trinkets (Slinky's, water guns, play dough, etc.) and then would draw a name from a hat. Each kid was listed in the hat a certain number of times based on how many things she got for the blanket. 

It was one of the most awesome experiences of my childhood... the thrill of wondering if my name was going to be called next, planning out what I would choose and alternates in case my choice was snatched up by someone else, and the general euphoria of sitting around with a dozen other children doing the exact same thing. It was awesome.

Click the jump for the other 4!