I’d settled into a harsh reality I’d been forced to accept; if I didn’t make a change I was destine to become one of the broke and lonely on-screen portrayals of a writer. I was approaching the most important time of my life; middle school. It was time to get serious. It was time to focus on one of the more solid, promising aspirations; a singer or a famous paleontologist whose claim to fame was discovering her first dinosaur fossil in her backyard.
It was time to put down the pencil and start digging.
As middle school progressed, I was forced (yet again) to give up my ‘new dream’ of becoming a paleontologist whose claim to fame was finding a dinosaur bone in her back yard. It became very uncool to spend large about of time excavating in your back yard alone, so I was forced to abandon this dream as well. I resulted to my safety net profession of becoming a famous singer. It was through this outlet that my writing resurfaced. Singers made money and they also wrote songs, perhaps this was the career that was truly my calling.
In my seventh grade year of middle school my friends were into watching horror movies, so naturally, I was too. Around this time movies like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer were the hot new thing on video tape. This spurred me to write my own horror flick, in short story form. My inspiring story of a murderous scarecrow, whose victims all had the names of carefully selected members of the student body, spurred a group of my friends to compose their own short stories of their own murdering madmen, whose victims’ names were derived from their own selection of members of the student body. The domino line didn’t stopped their; my friends stories were also inspirational. Their stories inspired teachers to assign numerous in-school suspensions and after school detentions. My story was long gone by the time the others stories circulated around the student body and moved on to the staff.
Life continued on through middle and high school. I survived on a diet of songs and poetry, sticking to my aspirations of a famous singer. It wasn’t until after graduation that I finally gave that up.
My reality check came when most do; when I became completely miserable with the route my life had taken. I was twenty years old, not in college, and working a job that I had long since begun loathing. Cleaning my boss’s house, my mind often went other places, as one could imagine why. I was, literally, scrubbing the floors of my boss’s house when I decided that I wanted my life to mean something and then and there decided to figure out what held meaning for me.
I thought about my childhood. The things that used to make my happy: dinosaurs and writing. It was in those degrading moments of sweeping up dried dog poop from my boss’s floor and chipping dried food from dishes that inspiration would return in more ways than one.
Since focusing myself on my chosen path, I found a number of people at the college I now attend, in the same path I was. They're outing their dreams and wishes. I’ve found myself giving a lot of advice, and getting a lot in the process. I wanted to extend that to beyond those who I see daily, for myself as much as others.
Now, after my extended introduction, I welcome you to my site, my blog, my mishaps, my mistakes, my misunderstandings, all spelled out. In hopes to provide direction, encouragement, inspiration, and a little entertainment to those in the process of cooking up their own Fiction Dish.
Next post: There are five things ever new writer should be doing. Revisit Fiction Dish to find out what they are!
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