Tales that certainly feel long ago

Reading one of Graham‘s recent posts started me thinking about writing stories. Not the act of writing, I mean stories about writing.

I have never almost stopped writing, so I don’t have one of those stories to tell. But I can clearly place the moment I realised I wanted to write. And not only write, but be read.

I was nine, in primary school, and we had to write a story. I was obsessed with cheetahs at the time, so naturally I wrote about the struggles of a young cheetah family. As you do. I had a great time writing about their battles with nasty hyena neighbours and how they overcame such adversary only to be hunted by poachers. I think the poor cheetahs were also eaten by the end… Hey, it’s creative? Right?

My dad helped me type it up and print it out, and I made a cover for it and drew plenty of illustrations (including the eating part). As it turned out, my story was the best in the class. I even got to stand up in front of everyone and read it out. When I got to the part where the cheetah family were eating dinner and described the scene in all its gory I’ve-seen-too-many-documentaries detail, the whole class went “ewww”.

THIS was the moment I got hooked. They responded to my story! They didn’t just sit there and passively listen, ther intereacted, they got involved! What a thrill! It was amazing and I knew that I wanted more of it. I wanted to write more and I wanted people to read what I wrote so they would respond, over and over. So I could make them feel something or think something, and get a reaction.

Could explain why I enjoy writing horror so much 😉

So that’s it, my writing story. I still have Cheetahkins’ (I know, what an original name!) story filed away somewhere. I guess I keep it so I can look at it again, if I ever need that ‘why do we do this’ boost. But I’m pretty addicted as it is.