tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Disclaimer: This is the rough start to what I hope will eventually be my novel, book, or whatever this turns into; a work of facts woven through fiction. A work in progress. So I reserve the right to come back to this post to edit, as writers are often wont to do.
Thinking about your past is a great way to really consider your future.
When I was in about the third grade or so, I decided I wanted to be a writer. We used to have assignments in school that included drawing pictures and writing a short story to accompany them.
I remember spending hours at night, recopying my text carefully onto the pre-lined sheets our teacher had given us, which left room at the top for illustration. Page after page I would rewrite my story, making sure my penmanship was perfect, checking spelling.
I wrote a short story about a science fair gone awry, as a young student found her project had mistakenly been thrown in the trash by her father. After chasing down the trash truck on her trusty steed (her pink huffy with streamers on the handlebars, if I remember correctly), the young heroine made it safely to school just in time for the contest.
She won first prize, which was a trip to the Caribbean. (Seemed like a reasonable prize for an elementary school science fair to me at the time. Perspective is everything. And if it makes a difference, the winning entry was a very complicated looking robot made out of a cardboard box- at least according to the illustration.)
By the sixth grade I had moved on to ripping pictures out of my Cat-A-Day calendar and making up stories about the cats and their owners. One particularly fluffy, white Persian cat apparently got very sick and died, leaving her child owner heartbroken. Other cats looked mischievious in their pictures, and so went on to untold adventures while their owners were sleeping or in school.
Accordingly, I had planned that I would therefore become a famous novelist and live in an apartment in New York City with, of course, four cats. There was no husband in this life plan of mine, nor children, and it didn’t occur to me that this was even unusual for a young girl. I hadn’t outwardly decided against marriage or children, they just hadn’t been included in my plan.
“The Plan” remained unvaried until I went to college where I was lucky enough to fall in love. I then allowed it to change slightly- moving instead to Washington, D.C. after graduation, and gaining one husband and two cats. Though not quite a real writer yet, I still had no urge to have children.
I realized that I was quite comfortable in this life of mine when it just recently hit me that I had stopped writing. Somewhere between stories about science fairs and adventurous cats, and graduating from college, I had forgotten to write. A little bad poetry here and there, sure. But real, serious writing? None!
I’ve started anew then, trying to force myself to put something out there into the ether. Even if no one reads this but me (and my diligent writing group), I’ll at least have started working on the rest of that life plan of mine.
Otherwise, I think I’m doing okay so far, traumas aside.
