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Writing Inspiration
(February 6, 2010)
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2010
Writing Inspiration
I wrote a blog at the start of this about getting into writing. And I just became aware of something. I was wrong. Mhm, I was. Which is funny because I hadn’t realized that I was writing something that was wrong. But at the time, it was right to me. I’d forgotten something. I’d forgotten something that I remembered last night.
I had a dream about my dad. He was looking over my writing and helping me edit it. I remember that he was enjoying reading it. My grandmother was also there. She was cleaning the kitchen in the house we were in. I’m not one hundred percent sure, but I believe it was my dad’s house, which was my grandmother’s before it was his.
My dad passed away in 2001 on his 56th bday. It was Aug 27th, which was two weeks after my 21st, on the 15th. Something I think that happens when someone you love passes away, is that they try to reconnect with you in different ways. I think because I’m open to it, my dad connects with me through my dreams. I will literally dream that my dad and I hang out. Whether it's having lunch or doing something like going somewhere.
Honestly I know, in reality, that my dad probably isn't really coming to me in my dreams, but it makes it that much easier to have lost him. I was a daddy’s girl. And I like to believe that he does come. I guess it all depends on whether you believe in your relatives coming to you after they pass on.
In that dream, I knew my dad was proud of me for pursuing my writing career. I knew that he was trying to tell me that it was going to be a lot of work, but I could do it. Because he always made sure I knew I could do anything I wanted, as long as I wanted it. He always enjoyed reading my books.
Which is when it hit me.
I thought about that dream quite a lot and I remembered something that I’d forgotten. I got into writing short little Halloween stories one year (a moment) after I read the book Alvin Shwartz’s Scary Stories and thought that it would be a good idea to write my own. Well, when I did, I read one of them out loud to my dad over the phone. The one I’d written was based on our family in a vampire style book.
Needless to say, he didn’t appreciate me killing him off in that story :) I’ll go ahead and post that sometime to show you what it looks like to read something I wrote in the beginning. I’ll even write it exactly like I wrote it period. I won’t edit it. At least no more than I did a few years ago by actually splitting up the paragraphs—I hadn’t known what a paragraph was before lol—and that’s it. I’ll even take a pic of the cover I made for it. Just also to show you that writers don’t start out as good writers. It takes practice to get good, just like anything else in life. But I digress…
What I realized was that I used to write those short stories and I would give him copies to read. I don’t know how much he liked them, but I put in such work to make cool covers for them and all sorts of things. I was elated when I'd give him a new one. So excited that I'd produced a new book! I even still have them. I couldn’t get rid of them. My dad had them in his office when he’d died and we cleaned stuff out. I found a lot of the things I’d made him over the years in that desk of his.
I wrote those for him. He was the reader I wrote for. The “reader” that Stephen King says is his wife, Tabitha. He writes with her in mind. Wondering what she’ll think of this or that? Will she laugh or not? My dad was mine back then. He was my inspiration and he was the one that really got me to focus on my writing. But when I lost him in ’01 it took me a few years to get back into it. So in reality, it was him that really got me focused on writing. He was always the one that supported my decision to write. As even now, saying it out loud to my mom or brother, makes me feel as if they only think it a "fad" or something. Not to really be taken seriously as if it were a joke. I’d never thought about that until I had that dream the other night. It was surprising to me. A little bit of a revelation there.
It’s funny looking back to remember that. I didn’t remember it. I had that dream just now, when things seem to be falling into place, that I remembered it. Makes a person wonder…
Why now?
Copyright 2010 by AHBrowne
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