Why I Write (inspired by Wonderbook)
As I mentioned on Friday, my current craft book is Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer. Within the first chapter, he talks about the concept of a Scar or Splinter that creates an irritation, “some kind of galvanizing and enduring impulse,” that then combines with a need to communicate and tell stories.
In the margin of the book, I scribbled, “loneliness/not like the other kids I knew -> lived in my own worlds.” But I thought that could use some expansion and explanation.
I was a weird kid. I was small for my age as a result of being sick a lot when I was young. I was also SCARY smart. This is not a brag–my mom had my IQ tested when I was young, and it was apparently off the charts. (I have never gotten an actual number out of her. She says she kept it from me because she didn’t want it to impact the way I thought about myself, in terms of either becoming arrogant or being disappointed when I didn’t excel at something. This was wise of her.)
But being scary smart meant that I started kindergarten at age four. And I was tiny. My classmates apparently carried me around like a baby. (I don’t remember this. Probably for the best.) But given that I was a full year younger than some of them, it meant that I wasn’t necessarily as emotionally mature as them either, which increased the distance from them as we got older.
I also went to a school that was a good drive from where I lived, which meant that any friends I made at school weren’t people who lived near me, so I didn’t see them regularly outside of school. I had friends who lived on the same street as me, but they went to a different school (mostly public school, while I was in a Catholic school).
So what this wound up meaning was that I had friends, but I didn’t have a lot in common with them for a good portion of my childhood. Yes, we were kids growing up in the suburbs in the late 70s/early 80s, but there was a definite divide between me and them, from whatever angle you looked at it. And so, despite having friends AND three siblings, I spent a lot of my childhood somewhat lonely, not always able to find connections with my peers.
As a result, I lived in my own little worlds that I imagined. I wrote a very short story when I was about four or five about a magical blueberry, so my imagination was out there from a very young age. As I got older, I’d write stories about kids my age living “cool” lives in the real world or in space or with unicorns or whatever. I sometimes included my classmates with their names changed, but this was typically wish fulfillment–that my main character (inevitably another version of me) had all of these friends and boys who liked her.
But the thing is, it stuck. That Scar or Splinter of being just a little different, coupled with my imagination, pretty much guaranteed that I would be a writer. And when I read the couple of pages in Wonderbook that explained this concept, it absolutely resonated with me.
I’m still a weird kid, just a weird kid who got older, slightly taller (though still pretty small), and has experienced a lot more of the world, including numerous close friendships with people who are like me (and people who are not) and a wonderful, amazing, husband of 14 years (who is also still a weird kid). And I still spend a lot of time in my own worlds, at least inside my head and on the page.
And that is, in a nutshell, why I write!
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