I started writing in earnest when I was eleven. I'd always been a teller of tales, I just never thought anyone except my mom or younger brothers would appreciate them. And it wasn't even stories that I first took seriously; it was poetry.
In grade school I did very little that impressed my teachers and much that horrified them. I remember walking into art class one day and my teacher telling me that we would be using India ink in class and that perhaps I'd better spend the period in the library. That was the kind of kid I was. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy art class, I loved it. I just didn't enjoy it in the way I was supposed to. In fine art studies, I drew cartoons. When we used clay, I created monsters that would fight each other. I guess we can't blame my teachers for anticipating what sort of havoc would come from allowing me to play with India ink.
It therefore came as a complete surprise when I was approached my a teacher in the sixth grade and told that I should enter a poetry competition our school was taking part in. Winners would be published in a book of poetry and would be able to order copies of said book when it was released. Of course it was a bit of a scheme but this was the early 90s when it was much easier for everyone to be taken by such a thing. Certainly I didn't know any better. My parents were elated when they found out I had been selected as a winner. I'm pretty sure now that all who entered were selected, provided their poetry wasn't vulgar or plagiarized. My mom ordered several copies of the anthology; I still have my copy on my bookshelf and I know she does as well.
That sealed it for me. I was going to be a poet. From the sixth grade up until late into high school I read and wrote poetry obsessively. I carried around notebooks with me that I would fill up with my poems. As I grew older, my poetry grew more angsty. My friends, I recall, loved to read my work. They would pass around my notebooks and read my latest work together. That was always a pretty special thing in my life — I had people who truly wanted to read my work.
It was sometime late into high school, or maybe after I'd graduated, that I became disillusioned with poetry. I looked back on my work and thought of it all was fraudulent. Who was I to be writing such things? None of it was true. I wrote angry poems about being tired of life, about depression, or about love but none of them were ever about anything I actually felt. I didn't think so anyway. But there were a few poems I had written that stirred something in me. I had taken to reading Edgar Allen Poe and had tried my hand at writing gothic / horror poetry. I remember feeling those poems were more honest, mostly because they didn't pretend to be about my emotions; they were about ghouls and vampires and spirits.
Writing fiction wasn't exactly new to me. As I mentioned, I had always been one for conjuring tales. I was an avid reader, latching onto horror fiction early in life. I must have read every one of R.L. Stine's Goosebumps books published between 1992 - 1998. At 12 or 13 I got into his Fear Street series and then branched out into the likes of Christopher Pike and, inevitably, Stephen King. At age 13, while still in elementary school, one of my teachers pushed me to enter a post-secondary writing contest. Hundreds of kids sat in a hall and were given a one-hour time limit to write a short story, by hand (this was '97 or '98, after all). I lost the story but I remember it had to do with a prowler breaking into the house of a young couple and murdering them in the middle of the night. I won second prize.
Fast forward to my days late in high school when I'd grown sick of poetry. I decided to try my hand at writing short stories. Something clicked. For all the daydreaming I did, it's a wonder I didn't pick up on it sooner. I wrote story after story, all for my own amusement. My audience remained small; my mom, my brothers, and a few friends were the only ones to read my work. At one point I submitted a story to Cemetery Dance and received a handwritten rejection slip: "Good story. Not what we're looking for right now" was the gist of it. For some reason that was enough for me to stop bothering to submit anything anywhere. I was writing primarily for my own enjoyment anyway.
Every now and then a story of mine would get passed around the family or my circle of friends and someone would ask me why I wasn't trying to get published. I would shrug it off and pretend that I never saw writing as an attainable career. The ruse soon became truth to me.
I went to college for Broadcast Journalism and, like many who go to school for a particular skill, got a career in a completely different field. I had a lot of experience in food and customer service and so that's where I stayed. I made it into management and put most of my energy into advancing to the point where I was opening and running my own locations for big corporations that will remain nameless. Big corporations have no time for creative types. Not the ones I worked for anyway. I would work stupid-long hours and too many days a week. But late at night or on a day off, I would sit at my desk and write story after story. I tried my hand at a novel but found I couldn't stay focused on it enough with all else I had going on so I abandoned it.
And then intervention. Two women in my life changed my trajectory.
My grandmother had always been a fan of my work and was proud to have a writer in the family, even if he was hiding most of his stuff from the world. She called me up one day, excited about a course she'd just taken in screenwriting. She told me she thought it was something I should try my hand at. I demurred. I wrote short stories as a hobby. Why waste my time trying something that would never contribute to my livelihood? That was the attitude I had taken on by that point. She pushed and wore me down. She paid for me to take a three-semester screenwriting course at the University of Toronto. I was hooked after the first day. By the end of the course I had written my first screenplay.
Shortly before this offer from my grandmother, I had met the woman I would marry. Annie supported my screenwriting from day one. She has always been my best and most enthusiastic supporter. We were engaged less than a year after meeting and married ten months later. With her support and encouragement I wrote two more screenplays, one of which was based on that novel I had abandoned.
Writing screenplays is great but I was still way too busy with work to do anything serious with my writing. By that point I was managing someone else's business and had started my own. I was working seven days a week with next to no free time. The work was getting to me. I grew to despise the nature of my work. I loved being a leader but management was making me sick. The business I owned was in event entertainment and kept me busy nights and weekends. But the money was good.
Then came the second intervention. Annie, my superhero of a wife and partner, made me a deal. It was always our plan to have kids and we wanted to get started on that soon. Annie knew I had a novel in me that I was itching to write and that holding it in was hurting me mentally, emotionally, and even physically to some degree. She made me a deal. She told me to quit my job, get some part time work doing something less stressful, and write my book. After a full maternity leave, during which I would work as many hours as possible, she would go back to work and I would stay home with our child. In the time in between, I would write my novel.
And it worked out exactly like that. I got a low-stress job running a barbershop for a guy who understands my first passion is writing. My free time was spent writing. We had our first child, Gideon, in November of 2019. By the time Annie went back to work, I was on my dozenth or so rewrite of my first novel.
That brings us, more or less, to today. I'm completing a final polish of the novel and putting together a short list of literary agents to solicit. Will I be successful? Lord knows. I'm grateful for it the opportunity and the support system I have.
There's so much more to all of it than that, of course. Maybe I'll touch on some of that later.
And the stories? I have a plan for them — those that are worthy, anyway. The screenplays too, I hope will see some success. One was a semi-finalist in the Screencraft Horror Screenplay Competition so maybe it's worth shopping around. I've always got way too many things on the go, it seems. It's a lot more manageable when they are things you love.
Thanks for sticking with me. 'Til next time,
-C.S.