Telling My Tales

I’ve spent pretty much my entire conscious life narrating to myself. I cannot control writing a story inside my head. If I stopped to write everything down I phrase in thought, I’d get nothing done.

Yet, somehow I stopped writing years ago. I kept up my inner narration, but I stopped getting anything on paper. I’m not sure exactly why. I’d been a journalist and so writing was a job, even though it rarely felt that way. I could write news stories by deadline comfortably. I would do my research and my interviews effectively, even though this was before the internet was in wide usage. I did write on a computer, but regular email use was just emerging, and most of the newspaper layout was done by hand. Thus, I had to call to interview people and I had to go to the library and search microfiche. I had to set up appointments and attend meetings in person. Although I was busy writing for work, I also wrote fiction stories and poems. Then, I just stopped.

I could blame adulthood I suppose. I switched careers and became a teacher, so I needed to go back to school. Then I got a full-time teaching job and got married and had kids and did all kinds of grown up stuff like cooking, and food shopping and laundry and driving kids places.

I kept right on with the stream of consciousness storytelling in my head. I would see interesting things happening and write a lead paragraph internally. I would read books and newspapers and websites and mentally rewrite the work. I would think of angles in stories that the writer left unexplored. I’d research…