Well, Let's Talk About Me For a While
I'm in a reflective mood this Christmas.
There was never a time when I didn't picture myself as a writer. When I was a kid I wrote and designed my own book line called Live! Fights! Books. (Don't ask me why Books didn't get an exclamation point.) There was a trilogy of space adventures that revolved around the difference between a sandwich and a sand witch. There was a western adventure about a brave herd of mustangs trying to avoid an evil mustang hunter armed with a Super Gun. And there was my magnum opus, SuperTiger, which pretty much explains itself.
I always pictured writing as part of a whole spectrum of genius I would one day display. I would be a poet/singer/actor/artist and if I was good at something else, I'd do that too. Around thirteen, I dropped all of those other aspirations and decided writing was the big one. I would be a writer or... well, there wasn't really an or. I just would be a writer.
My feelings about writing haven't really changed since that day. I often wish they had. I tell myself that if things had gone a little differently--if, for example, Marvel Comics hadn't cancelled my favorite titles, or if I hadn't just been seduced by the beginning of Robert Jordan's series, I would have ended up as an artist, not a writer at thirteen. It's not true. I always did words with pictures. I always read instead of looking. When I got into comic books, I wanted to write and draw them.
Who can tell why people like to tell stories? I have my personal favorite theories--from the practical evolutionary standpoint that the left brain imposes order on random information from the right, and that for every new development in society our left brain compensates too well with stories upon stories--or Tim O'Brien's poetic musing that a story is a form of personal salvation, a reconciliation to the unknown, a kind of prayer. From one standpoint, I'm especially starved spiritually, and from the other just confused. But I don't really know.
In high school, after I learned to read and like other things besides epic fantasy, I kept writing epic fantasy. In my creative writing class then and now, I could write the cool literary stuff that got me instant respect, but when I went home I slaved away on a very bad Robert Jordan ripoff. I read Vonnegut and Salinger and Kerouac, more than I read epic fantasy after a while, but I still wanted to write a series of five thousand-page books. I don't know if it will ever happen, but I still want to do it. I don't think that has much to do with left brain/right brain or reconciling myself to the unknown. I think it's more that I'm trying to recapture the sheer bliss of reading science fiction and fantasy for the first time when I was thirteen, with no skepticism, no recognition of genre clichés, and nothing else in my life more important than the next book. Writing lately has felt a lot like slowly shoving pushpins through my eyelids and into my pupils. But I still feel the urge to produce something long, intricate, and exciting.
There was never a time when I didn't picture myself as a writer. When I was a kid I wrote and designed my own book line called Live! Fights! Books. (Don't ask me why Books didn't get an exclamation point.) There was a trilogy of space adventures that revolved around the difference between a sandwich and a sand witch. There was a western adventure about a brave herd of mustangs trying to avoid an evil mustang hunter armed with a Super Gun. And there was my magnum opus, SuperTiger, which pretty much explains itself.
I always pictured writing as part of a whole spectrum of genius I would one day display. I would be a poet/singer/actor/artist and if I was good at something else, I'd do that too. Around thirteen, I dropped all of those other aspirations and decided writing was the big one. I would be a writer or... well, there wasn't really an or. I just would be a writer.
My feelings about writing haven't really changed since that day. I often wish they had. I tell myself that if things had gone a little differently--if, for example, Marvel Comics hadn't cancelled my favorite titles, or if I hadn't just been seduced by the beginning of Robert Jordan's series, I would have ended up as an artist, not a writer at thirteen. It's not true. I always did words with pictures. I always read instead of looking. When I got into comic books, I wanted to write and draw them.
Who can tell why people like to tell stories? I have my personal favorite theories--from the practical evolutionary standpoint that the left brain imposes order on random information from the right, and that for every new development in society our left brain compensates too well with stories upon stories--or Tim O'Brien's poetic musing that a story is a form of personal salvation, a reconciliation to the unknown, a kind of prayer. From one standpoint, I'm especially starved spiritually, and from the other just confused. But I don't really know.
In high school, after I learned to read and like other things besides epic fantasy, I kept writing epic fantasy. In my creative writing class then and now, I could write the cool literary stuff that got me instant respect, but when I went home I slaved away on a very bad Robert Jordan ripoff. I read Vonnegut and Salinger and Kerouac, more than I read epic fantasy after a while, but I still wanted to write a series of five thousand-page books. I don't know if it will ever happen, but I still want to do it. I don't think that has much to do with left brain/right brain or reconciling myself to the unknown. I think it's more that I'm trying to recapture the sheer bliss of reading science fiction and fantasy for the first time when I was thirteen, with no skepticism, no recognition of genre clichés, and nothing else in my life more important than the next book. Writing lately has felt a lot like slowly shoving pushpins through my eyelids and into my pupils. But I still feel the urge to produce something long, intricate, and exciting.
posted by Spencer at 8:46 PM
4 Comments:
Sometimes I read old favorites in hopes of recapturing the joy of reading them for the first time. It doesn't work. You have to find new stories to be joyful about. Sad, but true. And you are a rockin' AWESOME writer, and your story isn't a bad Robert Jordan ripoff. I detest Robert Jordan. He could have condensed his books all into one - or at most three - and it would have been a better story. And I wouldn't have quit reading after the 8th book because I was SO SICK OF IT.
This post has been approved by Chrissy Ellsworth.
This post is shocking because it's pretty much my life story (at least up until now...). I grew up and wanted to be that magical actor/singer/writer, but I hit teen years and focused on writing. And, just like you, all I read was epic fantasy for years!
Weird... it's sort of like I live in a mirror universe, parallel from Spencer Ellsworth...
- Jaden Nation
www.undergroundunrest.com/blog
Ambitions... why is it that you, Spencer Ellsworth, always have the ability to cause so much introspection in myself? I miss the days when we would stay up until--um, a really late hour--and talk about these things.
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