To discourage a dream is to erase the potential of what
could be. You never know what went into daring to strive for that one important
goal, or what might be lost in giving up on it.
As I sit here on the one year anniversary of the release of
Guitars and Cages, I’m reminded of how close it came to never being submitted.
I’d been writing for years, little stories that sat in notebooks or on my
computer, ones I co-wrote with friends and ones I’d worked on by myself and
shared with only a handful of people. Being dyslexic, I’d been told many times
over the course of my life that I should not pursue anything that involved
writing, since I can’t spell well and struggled all through school to get a
grasp on grammar, tenses and punctuation.
What sucked the most, though, was how much I loved reading
and writing. Along with art and music, they were the things I loved the most in
school and in life. I could spend quiet hours in my room losing myself in a
book or writing poetry and never once feel alone or bored. My other love was
animals, and I’d thought to be a marine biologist because I absolutely loved
the ocean and sharks, but again, I was told over and over that I would never be
able to pass the courses I needed to take, because I couldn’t learn to spell
the words.
The sad part is, that proved true. Though I tried in college
to take biology and loved the study of all different kinds of sciences, I quickly
learned that with the points taken off on tests for not being able to spell the
words, I would never graduate in any of those majors. It was disheartening to
see the potential to spend my life doing something I loved diminished over and
over by my inability to untangle letters. Add to it the fact that traveling the
country with my band was quickly yanked off the table by my mother and I soon
found myself wasting my 20s doing things I came to hate.
Looking back, I realize how stupid I was to let her convince
me that she could take me to court and have them declare that I had to be under
her directive until I was 21, but she was a social worker, and for most of my
teens she accused me of doing drugs simply because I disliked conversation and
loved being up in my attic alone with my art and music. Funny thing about that
was that I never even smoked a joint until l was 18. I just loved creating
things, and it was easier to create when no one was talking your ear off or
peppering you with questions.
I was a fearless kid growing up. Diving off waterfalls,
doing the mile and a half ocean swim, jumping off the tops of slides, tying
ropes to trees and leaping off the roof of the house like Tarzan, but inside I felt
inferior, because every test was a struggle and sometimes I felt like the butt
of some cosmic joke when my mom would say “haven’t I told you a million times you
don’t spell it like that?”
Yeah, she had, she still makes comments about how I never
learned how to spell surprise since I would always spell it with a z. I
remember that I’d get nervous and second guess, that I’d sometimes even talk
myself out of the right answer or know the answer was ‘b’ and write ‘d’
instead. Then I got to go home and listen to them ask how I could screw it up
in school when I had it right, verbally, when they’d quiz me at home. But verbally
was easier, I could speak the right answer and not completely fuck it up.
Writing became as much a frustration as a joy, and for a while,
I didn’t bother with anything longer than a song. Less words to screw up, and
most of them I only shared with the band, we were all learning how to write
lyrics so we were pretty much in the same boat.
Years later I got involved in writing as part of an online
game, and for the first time in many years I was creating characters and
designing the worlds in which they lived in. I was even sharing my stories with
others in the group, grateful when they didn’t pick on me too much for
butchering spellings or using close to, but not quite, the right word to
describe something.
They were the ones who gave me the courage to seek out a
writing workshop, and later, to take the bits and pieces of roleplays and flesh
them out into the story that became Guitars and Cages. I have to admit, taking
that story and sharing it on gayauthors.org was scary as hell. I expected to
get laughed at, ignored, or worse, told to go back and take remedial English. Instead,
I met people who actually offered to beta read and edit for me, who read my
story and left comments, who offered advice, and who came to care about what
was going to happen next and the characters themselves.
It was awe inspiring. Because of the people I met I actually
found myself wanting to write more, wanting to share my stories with more
people, and feeling, for the first time since I was a little kid, like I could
actually achieve my childhood dream of being an actual published author.
Four books later and I am still in awe of the fact that I get
to wake up each morning and do something I love. After working in jails, in hog
confinements, in bars and kitchens, newspaper offices and retail merchandising,
it’s nice to be able to do something that brings me joy and doesn’t leave me
stressed out and wanting to pop a Xanax at the end of the day.
Looking back, I know how easy it would have been to give up
on the dream completely, to not even bother doing it for fun, to have spent my
spare time on hobbies that might have been ‘easier’ for me to manage, or ‘more
suitable.’ But the only thing that has ever suited me was being creative and I
can’t wait to see what I come up with next. I hope you’ll enjoy it with me.
