Action!
Hi! My name is Moni, or Tammy if you really want to be nosy. I haven't written a blog since my junior year in high school. Back then I was drooling over the wide shoulders of a metal mouthed, tight T-shirt wearing maniac and all of the sheninagians we pulled at our first job together. This blog will be a little less about coveting, and a little more about writing.
When I tell people that I'm in the midst of writing a novel, they get this look on their face that kind of wants to say "Please don't ask me to read your stuff. I have a very busy life and I don't want to read about you wallowing in vodka and bunny slippers." I have to warm them up to the idea that I'm, ahem, actually a pretty good writer (whilst hiding my first draft in a box under the sofa.) I've been writing seriously since the end of fourth grade. I was scared of telling my family. At the time, I really didn't think that it was a real job, something that someone would actually do from nine-to five and get paid. But I was always nose deep in a Stephen King novel and would think to myself, this lazy bastard doesn't do anything all day except sit at his typewriter while drinking warm beer and wracking his brain for scary monsters, and he's getting paid to do it. Ding ding ding ding ding! I can do that no problem! I told my dad after he was picking me up from school one day, nervousness fumbling through my fingertips. I remember being so small and him being so tall and large, like a giant tree I was too afraid to climb. Would this big dude laugh at me? I wondered. "I want to be a writer when I grow up," I said as he turned the car onto our tree lined street. I remember him shrugging his shoulders, the traces of a small smile on his face as he considered the idea. "Go for it," he said. So I did.
Writing was easiest when I was in class. It didn't matter what school I was at, what grade I was in, what class I was pretending to take notes from, I always had a notebook open on my desk, and I was always writing down a scene. I finished a whole story in a 200-paged college ruled notebook write at the end of a science test in the sixth grade. During an assembly about drunk driving my freshman year, when they dimmed the lights for the stage while everyone was huddled into the small cafeteria, I was haunched over on the lunch table, my pen wisping away at a new dialogue. That was my thing. I was a writer. I was always writing. People would stop me at the end of class, the time dwindling down before the last bell of the day. They would stretch their necks over my desk, my pen writing fire across the pale blue lines of my latest work. They would ask, "So...whatcha writing?"
"A book," I would say.
Surprised: "A book? Like a real book?"
"Yup."
And always the biggest question: "How many pages is it?"
If I said anything higher than sixty pages, they would gasp. "Oh my God. I wanna read it when you're finished." And I would smile, proud, happy, eager to finish.
I started an idea about high school friends shifting through the times and changes of their high school career while I was a sixth grader in Virginia. I had no idea about high school, but I watched a lot of people, and I watched a lot of TV. There are four of these stories, and I finished them all my junior year. I started a book about a space cowboy, catching bad guys, and saving damsels in distress all while saving the universe in his tight leather pants. I finished this the summer before I moved to Florida, before my sophomore year. I started a book about my first job working at a pizza buffet and all the crazy characters that worked there with me. The idea from the story came from a simple question: wouldn't it be cool if the pizza place acted as a cover for drug distribution? I finished this story my senior year. I started a love story about a boy and a girl at the end of the seventh grade. The boy would come to represent every son of a bitch that I ever fell in love with and the girl would represent me. I've revised this story at least four times, and this year I intend to get it published.
Published! That was the word that I wanted most of all in my vocabulary. My dream was to become the youngest author on the New York Best Sellers List...at twelve. My craft just wasn't up to par then, but damn could a little girl dream. I sent in a few ideas to Scholastic when I was fifteen. I got rejected because I didn't have a literary agent. While reading the rejection letter, I wondered out loud what the hell a literary agent was? I kept writing. Once I graduated high school without a clue in the world as to what I wanted to do to, you know...earn money, it began to dawn on me that maybe being a writer full time was a bad idea after all. I mean, all I did was sit at my desk and live my life vicariously through my characters. My parents were breathing down my throat. My hair was nappy. My car was giving me problems. I had to do something with my life. Expeditiously.
I thought out the idea to be a nurse, like my mother. I didn't really want to spoon food people all day. I really didn't want to smell old people fart all day. I knew that I didn't want to be someone's only care. What if someone died on me? Holy Christ, I couldn't take that kind of pressure. I thought about going to college, about getting my associate's degree in English, but the year was 2007 and the gas prices were ridiculous. The pay to live was ridiculous and I didn't want to have to make the decision one day of eating dinner or paying for an atrociously priced English book. I even thought about film school. I love movies. I love bossing people around... Bingo! I'll be a film director! I'll be the black female version of Stephen Spielberg! But film school was too far away from home. Film school cost $75,000...a year. And even if I did finish school and got a degree, there was no guaranteed openings for a job. After awhile, I got married and toyed with the idea of being a dental assistant. They made awesome money. I needed awesome money. But life happened and I had to quit school. I stared longingly at my computer screen one lonely afternoon, and dusted off an old manuscript. Oh, well. Back to page one, I guess.
So this year, I've published some work on a website called Smashwords.com. People come across my crazy titles and they become interested. They download my work for free, sometimes for a fee, and they leave a review. It's a good feeling knowing that over 900 people have read one short story from me. It let's me know that I'm getting closer and closer to my dream...
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