I took a 30 year break – Dormant – Daily Prompt

I have always wanted to write.  Or I thought I did.  When I was 17 I scribbled a story in a large black book my dad stole from work one summer.  I don’t remember what it was about, but I do know that Victor Visser borrowed it to read and never gave it back!

That Christmas I asked for a typewriter, thinking that I had found my calling, and I bashed out a few teen angst inspired poems about solitude and rainy days before succumbing to rage and frustration and a realisation that the I could not type and would be spending all of my time correcting what I had bashed out.

I did very little after that with the exception of a Tolkien inspired epic poem which I worked on when I was in the Army just after I left school.  I have no idea what happened to it but I still remember the opening even after 28 years:

“The swirling veils of morning mist

were swept aside as morning kissed 

the sleeping lands that lay below

and waking winds began to blow.”

I think the rest was about a quest and an evil force and a ring and some wizards and…well you get the idea.  Mostly thievery.

And that, as far as I recall was it.  For a short while I thought Journalism was for me but I never did anything about it, I mostly just had an itch which I left unscratched.

Fast forward three decades, a wife, 2 kids, mortgage, career and a load of stuff in between I found myself inspired by a friend to look at WordPress just over a fortnight ago.  Well, I will be honest, it has been rather fun and wholly addictive and after nearly 30 years I have managed to write some of the things I always wanted to but didn’t know I did.

I have no idea how one should write, I do not know whether full stops go before speech marks and the structure of a good story is beyond me.  I do know though that I am loving doing it, even if it is a shambles.

Perhaps it was how easy it was to set up, maybe the joy of writing, perhaps it was the thrill of someone actually liking something I wrote or maybe just the joy of finishing something I meant to do so long ago but never got round to.

Whatever it is, my wife hopes I put that shelf up in the kitchen sooner than it took me to do this because I also assured her, in a very similar way, that ensuring she has somewhere to put the pans is something I want to do very much, if only I could find my spirit level.

 

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Want to read more of my stuff that’s not about me but about Aliens and zombies and people and rude poems and life and stuff?

https://afterwards.blog/2017/07/14/probing-a-cautionary-tale/

https://afterwards.blog/2017/07/03/first-blog-post/

https://afterwards.blog/2017/07/14/we-unlikely-few/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/Dormant/