Born to Write

                                        

I turned 58 today.  On the way back from dropping my 10-year-old off at school (okay, yeah, do the math), I began thinking about the piece I intended to write today.  I had something I'd been wanting to write about for almost a week.   Thinking about being born and how much I appreciate what God has given me in my life, and wanting to thank my parents for giving me life, sent me down a different and melancholy path to this question:  Am I doing what I was born to do?

I don't think I was born to act, direct or work as a private investigator.  I enjoy acting occasionally.  I enjoy directing immensely.  I feel trapped in a profession that no longer bears rewards, though.  But I have to write.  Long ago, when I was only 13 years old, I took a correspondence course in writing from the Palmer Writers' School out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, which, at the time, was one of the top correspondence schools for writers in America.  I found an advertisement in the January 10, 1969 issue of Life magazine earlier this morning.  And memories of the course begin to come back to me.  One important, early lesson was about writing because you have to write.  That has stayed with me for forty-five years.

I've been writing since I was 10 years old.  The first sentence I wrote was "Bee Bee was a boy who liked string and bugs."  Even at 10, I knew to use "who" instead of "that," since the reference was to a person.  There were many things I knew intuitively.  I understood what made a good story, because I self-centeredly believed that what interested me would interest everybody.  I wasn't shy about believing in myself and writing without fear of failing.  As I've grown older, I've met with failure more and, unfortunately, find myself expecting it--or at least accepting the potential for failure. 

But as a kid, I thought my stories were great.  And I expected everyone to want to read them and think they were the best thing they ever read.  And I expected adults to think,  "Wow, he's tops!  And only ten!  He'll be famous by the time he's a teenager!"  I really did.  Of course, when most people wouldn't even take the time to read my handwritten stories, it pissed me off.  But I just remember thinking: "I'll show you.  You'll be wandering around a book store and there will be my novel, and you'll say, 'Oh, my God!  Tom Eubanks' book is published,' and you'll have to buy it, and you'll bring it to me to sign, and I'll have to say, 'That'll be an extra five bucks, sucker!'"  I'm not kidding.  This is how I thought as a kid.

Sitting in the front pew of my dad's church in the San Fernando Valley (northwest Los Angeles), I wrote story after story, and continued through high school and college.  Here are a few I kept:

Marky's Gang and One Bed in the East Wing (both in 1962); To the Moon (1963); Brain of Sand (1964); The Leather Kiss (1967); an uncompleted World War II novel called The Hole (1968)--I realized after a time that I knew nothing about World War II; Just Looking (1969); Meow Said the Cat (1972); Bait (1973); and Twice Upon a Time (1975). 

Most of them were awful.  But I didn't know it.  Ignorance is not only bliss, it's inspiring, because when I finished a story, I felt elated and couldn't wait to show my parents, brothers and anyone else willing to read a 25-page, handwritten story about two kids building their own rocket ship and going to the moon, or suburban gangs fighting about nothing (think Seinfeld), or about a child who is a prisoner in his own bedroom, locked away by his mother and fed only enough to stay alive.  And I couldn't wait to write the next story, and the next.  I didn't know then what it was that drove me--and didn't really care--but I know now it was passion.  I had a passion for telling stories.  I couldn't help myself. 

Writing is the only thing in my life that I don't have to do...that I have to do.  That's how I know I was born to write.  It has nothing to do with talent or skill.  Talent is God-given; skill is learned.   I'd like to believe that God gave me talent.  And I know I've worked to learn how to write.  Being born to do something doesn't always result in a person doing it--or doing it well--but I've been blessed to have realized at an early age what I was meant to do.  For 48 years, I've been doing what I was meant to do.  That beats success any day in my book.

It's a happy birth day when I can write.
Posted by Tom Eubanks at 11/8/2010 10:07 AM
Categories: On Writing
Tags: Blast from the Past Storytelling Essay
 

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