The cardboard box sitting on my front porch looks normal from the outside, but on the inside, it's a treasure trove of my past. There are spiral notebooks filled with slanty, uneven writing, T-shirts I wore when I was 6 years old, paintings and drawings I made as a child. I found one journal from 1988, a blue spiral notebook filled with the strange ramblings of a 7 year old. My ramblings at that tender age were about Star Trek. Not Barbies. Not My-little-Ponies. Star Trek.
"Kerk got a new Enter Prize. When they took off the computer said, Worp 1, Worp 2, Worp 3, Worp 4. Jim winked at I don't know who but that was my favorite part because I didn't know he could wink."
"Then there was a red alert and this strang thing came abourd and struck a lady and made a modle of her. Than they went to Vegar and there was a big mechine that was lanched more than 300 years ago. Than one of Jim's crew wanted something as bad as Captine Cerk wanted the enterprize."
Yes, I was writing these things as a 7 year old, and apparently, that was how I comprehended the first major motion Star Trek picture. David and I read my writing and laughed out loud at the crazy spelling, and the fact that I was a Trekkie before I entered 2nd grade. That explains a lot about who I am, and I realized, that I really haven't changed much.
I think the only thing that's really changed is that fact that I've grown up, and sometimes it's hard to pluck imagination out of thin air like I did when I was a child. Now I'm thinking about bills and cooking and exercising and commuting. I stress out about deadlines and stories and interviews. I used to love to make up stories about mouse families that had a raccoon for a daughter and a "bere" for a son. Now I write stories about murders and Chase financial.
In the box I found books on writing and selling your first novel that I'd read back in middle school, and creative writing essays with big blue "A"s. This box of goodies has been a true reminder of who I really am: a writer. I have to keep plugging toward that goal, no matter how hard it becomes, no matter how broke I get. Whatever it takes, I have to stay true to myself.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
4 comments:
That is AWESOME---that you were writing and making observations like that when you were so young! And that it was about Star Trek. heehee Go, Kristin, go!
So cute! It's funny that we are both digging through our childhood treasures right now. I look forward to hearing more!
I should find my old stuff, see if it speaks to me. I wish I could find my old "Dino-Dictionary" I made myself way before Jurassic Park made dinosaurs cool.
It is so satisfying to find that threads of who you really are run back to the beginning. Things that I used to love to do, I still love to do (but as you say, in the world of responsibility, you can't do so much). In my teens I loved to move and work out and expend energy - 30 years later, I still do. Played music then - and now, taking up different instruments. Wrote as a child - still do, now as part of my job. Liked to be weird then - like to be silly now. Sometimes things are suppressed for awhile due to busyness or whatever, but it is delightful when they are rediscovered.
Post a Comment