The Super Sad Reason I Really Wanted to Become a Writer

“Why did you want to become a writer?”

It’s a common question writers get. Not that I’ve been asked it in a while by someone else, but I did recently ask it of myself. It made me think about what I used to tell people who asked.

“Because ever since I can remember, I was telling stories.”

That was true, but it was also not an honest answer.

Telling Tales

Even before I learned how to write, I regaled my family with stories I’d made up. (Well, sort of made up. I often heavily verbally plagiarized from stories I’d recently heard or read.)

Weird as it sounds, the place I remember storytelling the most was while my mom sat in the bathroom with me when I was going “grunts.” (What our family referred to as number two.) The thing I don’t remember is why she’d sit in there with me. I think maybe to make sure I went. Did I have a problem with that? I want to say I did because I also have a vague memory of a very unpleasant doctor’s visit that was the result of not going…

Anyway, the point is, while she sat there (trying to read the paper), I’d tell her a tale. I’d also tell tales when she drove me to school in the mornings and when she picked me up in the evenings. Except the after-school stories were usually from my own vivid imagination. I went to Cheeseman Academy in Denver, which was like a Hogwarts in Cheeseman Park. It wasn’t a wizarding school of magic, but it was a magical place nonetheless in a converted brownstone mansion.

We often had recess in the park. I’d tell my mom how we got chased by a “herd” of snakes and nearly avoided getting bitten. On several occasions I had stories where I helped a policeman stop a robbery or kidnapping. Finding the fabled secret underground dwellings near the Pavillion was also a popular tall tale. Or that we looked for ghosts in what we called the “Sugar Bowl,” which was a playground area.

Haunted

Actually, we didn’t know it at the time, but Cheeseman Park did have a history of hauntings. It was built atop a cemetery, and there was a massive scandal involving the relocation of thousands of bodies in order to build the park. Some say it inspired Steven Spielberg’s Poltergeist. But others disagree. That’s a controversy I explored on Haunt Jaunts once.

I never saw a ghost at the Sugar Bowl, but I felt like there was at least one restless spirit present in the school. I felt it when I went there, and it haunted my dreams for years after. Through middle school, high school, college, and beyond. Until a particularly vivid dream in my mid-20s that felt like a spooky farewell from both the school and its ghost. I never dreamed of Cheeseman Academy after that. Years later, I would find out it’d been torn down to make room for condos. (Or townhouses. Or some kind of housing.) I think the demolition had happened around the same time as my dream, but I can’t prove it.

Anyway, I had an active imagination as a kid and wasn’t afraid to use it. Becoming a writer seemed like the perfect use for it.

Plus, maybe then my mom would love and accept me. Maybe I’d become such a talented, famous, successful writer that I’d show her that I wasn’t stupid. That it wasn’t a mistake she gave birth to me. But most of all, that I was worthy of her love.

Sad, right?

Become a Writer, Find Love

I only just realized —or, rather, allowed myself to admit— that that was the real reason I wanted to become a writer. Deep down, I always knew I’d never really given anyone an honest answer about it. Not even myself.

Sometimes I thought it was because I wanted the “fame.” Or the “fortune.” You know, the kind highly successful novelists enjoy. The ones I now realize are nearly impossible to become.

But what I really wanted was acceptance. Validation. To be seen as worthy and smart. My mom loved reading. The only time I really felt bonded to her was when we talked books—or I told her a story.

But since she’s now dead, is that still why I want to become a writer? Or is it because I have characters and storylines crowding my mind, desperate to be released and demanding their spotlight on the page?

I will say it’s getting pretty noisy in my brain. Plus, I’m over the need for validation. I’ve learned how to give that to myself. Which is maybe the maturing I needed to do in order to devote my full attention to my characters and their needs.

Time will tell. But it is time for the work to begin…