A few nights ago I was sitting in my garage while my boyfriend and a buddy of his worked on his motorcycle. They were shaving things down, screwing things in and getting last minute touches done for a long road trip the two of them are taking along with hundreds of other riders. His buddy brought his wife along so she was sitting with me and chatting while the guys did their work. After a little while she started asking me about writing.
She asked when I began and what the first thing I remember writing was. She inquired about my writing education and my inspiration to become a writer in the first place. I smiled and quoted a poem I read back when I was in first grade called This Is My Rock by poet David McCord.
This Is My Rock
This is my rock
And here I run
To steal the secret of the sun
This is my rock
And here come I
Before the night has swept the sky
This is my rock
This is the place
I meet the evening face to face
That was the first thing I ever read that I could visualize without illustrations. It opened my imagination and allowed me to create the picture in my mind. I fell in love immediately. Shortly thereafter I began attempting my own poetry and short stories. Both I have sadly let fall by the wayside but I know in my heart they were my beginning.
In recent years I have focused almost entirely on my novels but after entering a short story contest earlier this year I remembered the joy and challenge it can be to create something so much more simple. Short stories are an art and being able to take the reader on a journey with only a few thousand words, to impart the visual and the emotion of the characters as well as their settings with a paragraph instead of a chapter is a talent many do not possess. I love the long, in depth stories I write but I think I am going to be working hard to practice more short stories and submit them for publication to broaden my writing horizons in the next year or so.
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