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| Wish I was still that cute. |
I
told my brother stories
when
we were tucked in bed.
I
told my brother stories
I
made up in my head.
I
told my brother stories
after
we had said our prayers
and
our father kissed and left us
in
the room we shared upstairs.
I
told my brother stories
when
tell me a story I’d hear.
We
should have been asleep but
he’d
beg from his bed so near.
I
told my brother stories
Once
upon a time, I’d say
or
continue one I’d started
before
sleep took us away.
I
told my brother stories
in
a voice so soft and low
so
our parents couldn’t hear us
in
the living room down below.
I told my
brother stories
when
we were tucked in bed.
Now
those stories are all gone
that
I made up in my head.
In
almost all interviews of writers the question is asked “When did you start
writing?” So many writers say they started writing when they were quite young –
eight or nine, even. I didn’t start until I was a teenager, and even then it
was only in a three-ring binder used as a journal, one story about a great-aunt
and several poems. It seemed that I should have been writing in my classes at school,
but I can’t remember being assigned an essay or anything that involved writing.
In case it was a faulty memory, I asked my cousin’s husband, who was a year
behind me in our school. He had to pause and think about it, and then said no. He
couldn’t remember any of our teachers requesting written assignments. Then I
asked a man at church who was a year ahead of me, and he didn’t think we’d ever
written anything, either. In fact, I only remember two books assigned to be
read; Ivanhoe and Romeo and Juliet, and there wasn’t a
written assignment connected with this. As far as I remember we only discussed
the books.
I
might not have been a writer, but when I was quite young, my brother, Jerry,
and I shared a room in the two-bedroom Cape Cod house my father built for us on
a lot next to my grandparents’ farm, and I told him stories each night. In
those years, we were sent to bed around 7:30, before the good shows on the
radio came on like Inner Sanctum or Fibber Magee and Molly. Not that we
didn’t often sneak down to sit on the steps
and listen, but we were usually caught and sent back to bed. My brother
was sixteen months younger than me, and he’d ask me to tell him a story every
night. More than likely I would have started with once upon a time, but from
then on I made them up. I remember times when I’d pause to consider what would
happen next in the story I was inventing, and he’d prompt me saying “What
happened next?” I’d tell him “I’m thinking.” Sometimes we’d hear one of our
parents downstairs telling us be quiet and go to sleep. If I fell asleep before
I finished the story, or he’d fall asleep, the next night I’d continue that
story and sometimes they’d stretch out for several nights or more.
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| My mother, father, Jerry and I |
My
sister Elaine was born when I was seven, and she slept in a crib in my parent’s
room. When
my mother became pregnant with my sister Suzanne my dad added a large
kitchen/dining area on the back of our house and turned the small kitchen we
had into a bedroom for Jerry, and then my two year old sister shared
my bedroom and the stories I told my brother ended. I wish I could remember
those stories, but I can’t. However, even if they weren’t written down, I still
was a storyteller at that young age. Although we weren’t taught the rudiments
of writing a story in school, apparently, all the books I read over my lifetime
fired my imagination and made me into a storyteller and also taught me how to
write those stories.
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| My handwriting was so much better then than it is now. |
The
day after I’d written this blog above and sent it for review, I was cleaning
out a cupboard in my library I hadn’t touched in years because there
wasn’t anything I’d needed in there. It was sort of out of sight, out of
mind. Imagine my surprise when I found a
somewhat tattered spiral composition book I thought had been thrown out almost forty years
ago when our basement had flooded. In it were four short stories I’d written, seven
poems and an essay on my nine best friends all written between the ages of fourteen and seventeen. Some of you may have read the blog I wrote this past May
8th, “Serendipity, Coincidence or Whatever.” It’s certainly another
example of that. I sat down and read the first short story. New Family is rather amateurish, but has
all the elements needed in a short story; a fourteen year old girl is facing a problem which makes her unhappy and then the problem is
nicely resolved in the end. I haven’t read Horror
at Midnight yet, but it looks like even then I was destined to be a mystery
writer.
When
did you first start writing or telling stories?
