The Pen is Mightier Than...Part I: Prequel to a Blog

"So What’s the Words…,” my two year old asked as he tried desperately to peer around the cover of the paperback I’d been attempting to read...

The Past

Writing was something that had come very naturally to me at a really young age, and while I can’t remember (no surprise there) those earliest attempts at creativity I can reach as far back as the third grade – a simple assignment set before the class by Mrs. Rosov, who had placed a photo upon the blackboard ledge and instructed us to simply write a short story based on what we were looking at. The picture was that of an alley behind what I would assume to be a row of apartments, clothes hung out to dry on clotheslines stretching across the street, two women talking to each other from their windows, kids playing ball in the street below, and a barking dog. What I had written about these people I couldn’t say, but I’d embraced the assignment with a fervor that was unmatched to anything else we were being taught at the time. In the months and years to follow this would result in something that would become nothing less than an obsession for me. What was it about a blank page that had so excited me, the call of an empty legal pad, or virgin composition book?

“You Poor Thing, Charlie Brown,” was to be one of my earliest attempts at writing something I had dreamed may actually see publication, based loosely on the Peanut’s Paperbacks of the early 70’s. I’d started a few lines on a yellow pad probably sometime around the 4th grade, but I don’t recall it ever panning out. That title would actually resurface sometime later in Junior High School as part of another creative writing assignment. I was getting pretty decent at tracing pictures of assorted Peanut’s characters from my collection of books and decided why not write the tale around that? It began with a lone picture of Charlie Brown and a caption underneath that read “It was another boring, do-nothing day.” I received an “A” on that assignment.

Somewhere around that same time while seated one afternoon on the horrendous looking brown cushion chair in our blue shag carpeted living room I opened to the first page of a brand new spiral notebook and wrote two words - “Thunder Mountain.” Thus began a tale of two teenagers; Bob Felder and Lisa Anderson who meet while on vacation and stumble onto some sort of mystery or other ala The Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew. It's all but impossible now to recall the specifics, but some of the elements included a chairlift, unexplained disappearances and hang gliders. What I do remember most however, is having absolutely no plot or direction in mind, just the challenge of the empty pages before me. That story had taken on a life of its own, seeming to write itself until one day I just abandoned it. Of course that notebook in return has abandoned me, never to allow a conclusion be reached, or a sequel, or…

Stupidly, and for some reason unbeknownst to me, I nearly plagiarized a children’s book for another assignment some years later. Chalk it up to laziness, apathy, or temporary insanity. Luckily I’d allowed a classmate to read a few pages several periods before I was to present it. He'd remembered reading the tale in grade school, as would a number of my other classmates, not to mention the English teacher. I spent the remainder of that day furiously writing “The many tales of Jimmy Piekarski” (the last name I’d borrowed from a female semi-famous someone I’d privately been stalking). I hated and despised the story of this habitual liar’s ridiculous fantasies, yet miraculously received a “B” on the assignment. Following that, I put down the pen and paper for close to two years, and would not reacquaint myself with the creative bug that still lurked within until my first year of High School. “Introduction to Creative Writing,” for which I’d received half a credit re-ignited my earler obsession, but not immediately, and not without some trepidation. During those first few weeks, I was simply uninspred, my first real case of writer's block I suppose. One of the first assignments we’d been given; describe an early childhood experience, seemed simple enough as my memory was still pretty much spot on at that point. The result had been nothing more than a bland retelling of a day spent seeing the big city for the very first time with my grandfather and younger brother, some of which I can still recall vividly today and should probably write down before those memories are no longer spot on! In a lame attempt to see what others had thought of my writing, I baited a girl from class one day while waiting on the lunch line, asking her about some of the stories that had been read aloud by the teacher (we’d had the option of not having our identities exposed). “What about the one of the kid and his first big trip to the city,” I’d hinted? “Oh, that was awful, terrible,” She replied.

I was mortified.

I was dismayed.

She’d insulted me to my face without ever knowing it. I was not however, a quitter, and fared slightly better on the next assignment. “El Dorado; A Modern Day Fairy Tale,” became my second offering. Not well received by the instructor, I had chosen to read it aloud in class; who looking back on that now probably did not receive it all that well either.

“What makes this a modern day fairy tale,” Mr. Calandros had asked?

“It’s loosely based on an album by the Electric Light Orchestra,” I responded, for which I’d received a satisfying nod.

Apparently this had meant something to him.
Trying not to repeat the failure of my earlier autobiographical attempt, I tried again, penning “Nelson’s Family Campground: The Truth Speaks Out…Almost!” Based on several trips to a Connecticut paradise in my mind, this story did everything but speak out! I recently went back to those now time worn and deteriorated pages in the hopes of ferreting out a memory or two for inclusion in my first blog; “Return to Innocence,” but found that reading it was as painful as it was repulsive, similar in scope to a bad movie screenplay that could never live up to the splendor of the original book.

The next outing was vastly different, and a real leap into new territory for me. “Lost Love” was a story of two teens who make it big in a tennis competition, but not without complications. Jean, (a girl I’d met camping a year or two earlier) played a central character who eventually met her demise during one of the matches in which we had made it to the finals (yes, I was the other central character). I think she had slammed hard into the fence trying to retrieve a long ball, fell to the ground, hit her head, and… It had been my longest piece as yet, but again was not well received until I’d redeemed myself by revealing that it had actually been based on a dream I’d had several weeks earlier, earning yet another satisfying nod from the instructor. I try not to look too deeply into dreams and their meanings, but to this day I have never played a game of tennis, and I’m relatively sure that up until that point neither had Jean. “Lost Love” clocked in at somewhere around 11-14 written pages, and really started the ink flowing again as my confidence began to grow.

The great thing about "Introduction to Creative Writing" had been that there was no true curriculum. In fact, students weren’t even required to actually write anything! As long as you participated in class conversations, offered insights, opinions, comments, criticisms, etc. and appeared to be doing something other than sleeping, you were awarded credit. I opted to go the other way, taking full advantage of the opportunity to write. It had become all consuming, the ideas coming hard and fast, stories flowing from me in what I can only describe as a raging river of ink. The following year I would be paid the ultimate compliment when a classmate would spoof something I had created! Over the past years, I have gone back to some of these stories sometimes just for old time’s sake, and sometimes playing with the idea of recreating them, building upon them, now with the mind of an adult while trying not to be too hyper-critical of the sophomoric writing style of my youth. I was after all, only a sophomore at that time anyway.

By the time I’d reached college in September of 1981, I had once again lost the urge to write, though every now and then assorted ideas and/or inspiration continue to surface. It has literally taken me a quarter of a century to pick up a pen again (that’s how most of these start out), returning first to the autobiographical style of my earliest Introduction To Creative Writing assignment, and with the hope that one day the creative juices may flow again.