I Knew I Wanted to be a Writer...
So, I've been listening to a lot of writers lately, and I must say I always agree with the Lilian Hellman quote, "If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talk about writing or themselves." But I met a psycho-editor years ago, this was before I realized the importance of making a good living in a career that you're actually happy about first, oy! I learned the hard way. This was back when I was listening to the very flawed advice from my father, but that's a separate blog post. Anyway, he was a total psycho-editor. He came to the class one night to give us advice on how to be published writers, but kept saying how he was a 'mimic.' No one in the class knew what the hell he meant. Another one of his psych-quotes was, "Whatever you were doing in the fifth grade, is what you're supposed to be doing in life!" When I asked him if he was editing books in fifth grade, he nodded assuredly and said, "Yes, of course." How in the world was anyone editing books in the fifth grade?
But as I wrote, he was probably not "all there" mentally. But it did plant a seed for better or for worse in me. And I reviewed what I was doing in the fourth and fifth grades. Now, the fourth grade was interesting because that year in music class we had a talent show. You could do anything related to your "talent." You could sing a song, make an instrument (drums out of garbage cans were popular), write a song, etc. I sang, "Davey Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier," and it was a huge hit. Everyone agreed that my act was the best. I did work on it, writing down the lyrics from an old record my grandmother had given me of Disney hit songs. And it was reminiscent of my stunning performance as an apple in the second grade, which everyone also agreed was the best performance that year. Then in the fifth grade, I did a mime show for the entire school and people were in awe of mime abilities. Ironically, I still feel somewhat of a balladeer (I even wrote a musical, "The Balladeer," in New York. So maybe there's something to it) and a mime.
The reason I'm writing this is because all the writers I'm listening to, have all said, "When I was ten I knew I wanted to be a published writer." And that never even entered my head when I was ten. I wanted to be a wizard, an inventor and a pathologist (like Quincy). But the outer world was telling me bard, balladeer, mime. I suppose this could equal - writer, Because the bards were the writers of their day. So, let's hope it's not too late.