When I was eleven, I scribbled out my first novella, I’ll Never Be the Same Again, on loose leaf paper and tucked it into a binder, forever creating my own destiny. I love writing. WRITING, not typing–I like typing, don’t get me wrong, and I happen to be fast at it–but writing, oh my, I get like a shark about to take a bite out of life…my eyes glaze over at the aroma of the crisp, fresh pages of a journal, and I feverishly tear into it with endless amounts of words.
I was that girl throughout school that rivaled Harriet of Harriet the Spy in every way, meticulously documenting everything that was happening to me every moment of the day–each glance I would capture in passing down the hall from the crush I’d have while on my way to the next class or all of the juicy details of the gossip my friends would share over lunch in the cafeteria. I was a “Dear Diary,” kind of girl for years and years. I also started plotting out and writing scenes for a full-length novel before I could even drive a car. I would write ideas down on anything I could get my hands on–gum wrappers, receipts, napkins–you name it. I even penned hundreds of poems and short stories, all by hand. Sadly, all of my stories starred my friends and their crushes, so I would let them keep them, and I never made second copies, so I’ve lost those first aspiring love stories, but all of the journals are still in my possession, locked safely away in storage, and someday, when I feel the muse coming, I’ll add YA (Young Adult) Romance to my types of genre that I write.
When I received my first word processor, my handwriting lifestyle changed. I gave into the lime green glow of the words and veered away from the handwritten means of self-expression. It was clunky and squealed out awful noises, but it made school a little easier, and seeing my words in print without having to type them on the family typewriter that had sticky keys was heaven-sent. It wasn’t until I actually graduated from college with my BA that I received my first computer. Yeah–I’m that old, just turned 44 last month, actually. This new computer of mine was too slow for the internet, but the word-processing capabilities allowed me to begin another novel along side the one that I had completely outlined and written scenes for in high school. A hundred or so pages into the new novel though, I upgraded the operating system, and I lost the book. I stopped writing for a while altogether in my dismay. When I finally came around again, I went back to good ol’ fashioned pen and paper until I owned a ‘real’ computer and another and another and…
I still journal in between bouncing writing around all of my Apple devices–my desktop, MacBook Air, my iPhone, etc. I’m covered when I have something to say. I no longer have to rummage through my purse for a gum wrapper like the good ol’ days of my youth. And, I still journal. In fact, my aunt-in-law blessed me with a new journal for Christmas that has a picture of my young daughters on the front cover along with the words, “Brooke’s Journal,” and, by the end of the day, those crisp, fresh pages had lured me in, and I had filled several of them up with an outline of a new Romantic Comedy novel that I plan on turning into an eBook once it’s written just to have “Indie Published” under my belt as a writer.
There’s something special about the pen and paper. I’ve even studied graphology a little bit–the way people write revealing how they feel, what their personality is like, and who they are hidden in the curlycues of their writing. My penmanship is atrocious. Even I can’t read my writing sometimes. It’s very loopy like an endless string of smiley faces, and it comes as no surprise to me that when analyzed it means that I’m open, positive, always moving forward, and generally happy. Yeah, that’s about right. I can easily go into a rage like any impassioned writer could, but overall, if I’m writing something down to be analyzed, it’s likely that my eyes are glazed over with the joy that comes with handwriting anyway and capturing that thrill in my scribble is bound to happen.
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