My Struggles With Creating, Part 2

“When I’m writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we are capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness.” - Maya Angelou

I’ve liked drawing from a very early age. I doodled whenever and wherever I could. One time I did a little drawing of my own superhero in the margin of a school workbook. I based it on a cartoon I had been watching and really liked. I must have been about five or six years old. I forgot about it and eventually turned the workbook in to be checked. I got it back with a note from my teacher. I got the message and stopped drawing in my workbook. So I doodled elsewhere.

One day just doodling and drawing wasn’t enough. I was around seven or eight. Star Trek was my favorite TV show and I had recently discovered Star Trek comics from Gold Key. I found myself with the desire to create my own Star Trek comic but lacked the skills to draw it. I didn’t let that stop me. I grabbed paper, pencils, and tracing paper. I came up with a story, picked out panels from various issues, traced them, added word balloons, then added my own dialogue. Tracing paper sure is great for tracing but makes for poor comic book pages when put together. I had a plan for that. I stapled the tracing paper pages to regular blank white pages to give the tracing paper a white background. I did the same thing for a cover, tracing the logo and a large panel of the Enterprise. Then I side stapled all the pages together. In the end I had a thick, crinkly, Star Trek comic book of my very own. Making it was so much fun that I made another one.

It’s amazing the lack of hesitation I had back then. No doubts, no concerns. I didn’t overthink things. I just did it. That’s something that’s gotten harder as I’ve gotten older. On the other hand it’s something that I’m more conscious of now. For years and years I was doing a little drawing here and a little writing there. Goals that kept changing, short term goals, vague goals. Recently I’ve become a little more focused. I’m writing regularly and I started this blog. What changed?

A number of things over the the last two years come to mind. Watching a speech a famous writer gave to aspiring writers. Discovering a writer whose work spoke to me in ways that others had not. Reading advice in a book on writing that was different from the advice I’d encountered in any other book. Starting a journal. Writing in it every day. My father’s recent health scare, which had me reflecting on life like I had never done before.

So here I am. I’m at a point in my life where the need to create and write has finally overcome the doubt and hesitation that I gained as I got older. I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to seeing where this leads.

Next: Speaking Up