Short Shorts #10

I think every devoted fan of reading eventually begins to believe that they too can write something. I have loved the written word since I could recognize the letters. But my true love affair was with stories. The tales those books could tell. Truth or fiction, or somewhere in between. When I was little, my babysitter and I would write short stories and put together illustrated books. I even still have one of these nearly thirty year old relics, with its lunchbag dragon on the cover. Thus began my secret career as a mediocre writer. Taking every excuse to write something, my grammar school years were filled with bizarre spy fiction and strange scifi tales collected in well worn Trapper-Keepers. As middle school and eventually high school came and went, my writing shifted to surrealistic prose and symbolist poetry. And like every well qualified writer-hobbyist, it isn't about those stories that others see or get published. It's about the stacks of unfinished fantasy manuscripts poured over for years, the overly researched but never written historical short stories, and that one elusive novel that you struggle to find the time to finish over the next decade. But for a lover of the story and a true mediocre unpublished writer, all those other things hardly matter. The story still exists, even if it's only in your own imagination.