Paperback Writer

I have always wanted to be a writer. Always. I wanted to be Jo March or Anne Shirley when I was a kid. I don't remember a time when I wasn't reading. I mean, I know developmentally I had to learn to do it, so there was an obviously a time when I couldn't, but yeah, I've always been a reader.
I think to want to be a writer, you need to be a reader. You need to love words, and to love how words can deliver a story that takes you completely to a different time and place. You need to be able to become so engrossed in a story that you'll totally forget that you need more than three hours of sleep to be able to function properly at work.
And that, folks, is me.
There are books, that are not "classics" like Little Women and Anne of Green Gables, that I keep from my childhood because they are my oldest friends. I was a military brat growing up, and there was a period of time during my middle school years, where I was switching schools every year, making and discarding friends as the districts continually changed, and as kids who'd been dorks like me became "cool." So, a lot of the time, I focused on my books as the constants in my life.
There is a book that I picked up from the library in League City, Texas, when I was in third grade. It was probably a bit over my head at the time, but I remembered a girl named Claudia who could talk to animals. A few years later, I may have been in eighth grade, I went into the brand new Barnes and Noble in Brandon, Florida and found a book called The Heart of Valor about a girl named Claudia who could talk to animals and her siblings. I snatched it up, remembering that I had read it before and that I loved Claudia. At some point, between moves or purging sessions once I went to college, I lost my copy of that book. And I was really sad, I felt like I had lost one of my friends.
I woman who wrote The Heart of Valor, L.J. Smith, also wrote The Vampire Diaries and The Secret Circle (also a favorite of mine, I finally gave away my copy of that trilogy when I moved last Memorial Day. Yes, I am serious), both of which are apparently popular TV shows on the CW. Therefore, there's been a renewed interest in her work, and... Guess what was republished? The Heart of Valor, baby! Guess what I have on my bookshelf? Oh yeah. :) And every now and then, when I'm feeling snuffly and sad and homesick, I'll pull that book out and visit my good friends Claudia and the other Hodges-Bradley kids.
So, anyway, that's what I've always wanted to be able to do: to write something that would touch someone, that someone would look at and think of as an old, dear friend. I remember after 9/11, when we all walked around shell-shocked, when we sat and discussed what life was supposed to be, when I was personally starting to crumble, I told someone that all I wanted out of my life, was to write something that made some girl somewhere feel like someone understood what she was going through, that comforted her what she was going through, that comforted her when she was feeling sad and alone.
Now, I've never had any delusions of wealth or anything to be gained from writing, so, growing up, I always said that I wanted to write and [fill in the blank] with whatever else my flavor-of-the-month career was at that moment. But writing was the constant. I wrote poems on Post-Its while working at a record store. I wrote a million different first chapters. I would always write. But, for some reason, I totally shelved my ambition to write.
Well, not for "some reason." A very specific reason: disillusionment.
It's not what you're thinking. Despite all of my emotional issues and my occasional basket-case-ness, I have a pretty thick skin when it comes to critiques. I took a couple of poetry workshops in college. The first go-round was good. I learned a lot and wrote some stuff that I loved. The second go-round pissed me off. The problem with "literary" types? Apparently, some random bullshit words on a page is brilliant. For example, we workshopped some guy's poem, and no one knew what it was about. We were all guessing, maybe it described a kiss? The writer said, "No. It was an elevator." And everyone fell down all over themselves talking about how amazing and postmodern and whatever it all was. I was going through a random happy period in my life, and my poetry reflected that. It wasn't Hallmark, by any means, but everything that was positive was called lame. And I was like, so what, you can't write a poem about a happy relationship? You have to be miserable, or so freaking obscure as to border on ridiculous, to be considered talented? And even though I was starting to get over my snobbery regarding romance novels, I wasn't over it enough to try to write one. Somehow I thought I was better than Jennifer Crusie, who had an MFA.
Yeah, I was an ass. I admit it.
So, anyway, I shelved the whole writing thing for a really long time. Every now and then I'd start playing with an idea, but nothing has ever come of it at any time. I lack follow through.
I had started to look into becoming a librarian because I liked books. I decided maybe I didn't want to write so much as I liked to read. I liked research, it seemed to make sense. I still like my job as a copy cataloger (I call it a librarian apprenticeship), but I'm starting to have those ambitions again. So, I'm thinking about dusting them off and seeing what happens. I just need to start following through.