as a child i would cherish the stories i had read, the stories i had told and the ones i had fabricated.
sadly as i have progressed through life, my own writting and story telling has taken a back seat to the trials and tribulations of your everyday life.
however whilst sitting on my lonesome after a particularly stressful day at the office- or school library if you will- i was absent mindedly pondering what my life would be like if i could physically create the imaginative personas that fill my head most hours of the day.
filled with naive determination i began furiously typing on my newly bought laptop, much to the dismay of the dedicated study group to my left. i got half way through my first story and realised how bored i was.
DELETE.
my second attempt was no better, the protaganist was not to my liking, and by the time i was half way through my introduction i realised i had deviated from the point and had no way of knowing what it was i really wanted to achieve here.
DELETE.
i could feel the frustration budding behind my eyes, the tears would come soon enough. childishly i gave into despair. what could i possibly have to contribute to the already increasing depletion of the worlds greenery?
i lay my head on the desk and pondered a few different ideas, growing all the more irksome.
i began daydreaming of my boyfriend todd, toying with ideas about our futures. a house here a baby there, both managing sucessful careers between the hours of 9 and 4.
and then unsuspectingly, my year 7 English teacher Mr Hume strode into my subsconscience.
Mr Hume was for lack of a better term- his own person. he was so incredibly slight of height and weight, with his sweaters and slacks, glasses and thinning but oddly vibrant hair.
being an 11 year old i wanted nothing more than to be like everyone else, but this man had so many ideas so many opinions and so much enthusiasm it radiated from every fibre of his body. sweaters and all.
just thinking of him brings a small smile to my lips.
he was honestly the most exhuberant and inspiring idividual i had met at the time, i remember the majority of our class work consisted of our creative writing.
we were given a list of scenes, many of them largely fantasy based and all of them incomplete.
i cannot remember what i had written at all, but i do remember my mother being called into the school and Mr Hume hugging her with such great force all present were speechless.
'your daughter' he said gasping a little 'is by far the most talented and thoroughly engaging writer i have come upon in such a long time'.
i swear i grew a few inches that day. but fastly becoming aware the library in which i was absentmindedly sitting was emptying i felt i had been cut off at the knees.
the feeling that i had lost my ability to write anything meaningful or engaging to say the least was like sledgehammer to the cranium.
i confessed my feelings to my boyfriend as he drove us home for dinner, his reply consisted of my writting some poetry or song lyrics. i took his advice and i wrote poetry that would rival Emily Dickinson's whole body of works! if she was illiterate and somewhat incapable of intelectual thought that is. feeling worse than before i tried to decipher what was so intriguing about the twilight series- which i was currently reading-, i gave up when i couldnt decide between the sexual tension or the human obsession with mortality and the possibility of an immortality filled with a 'soul crushing' love.
and so as i lie here absentmindedly listening to the sensationalised newsflash regarding another public figures sex scandal, i ask myself what it is that is really holding me back? am i that scared of rejection and criticism or is it a subconscience worry that i am never going to succeed. or is it simply that i cannot write nor could i ever to begin with?
