Writing for the Love of It

The back-to-school sales started with the sidewalk sale on rodeo weekend. Store windows painted with rodeo scenes — a clown in heavy make-up peeking out of a barrel, a cowboy flying from the back of a Brahma bull, a twisting, turning bronco, were obscured by piles of merchandise. Along Main Street, racks of clothing displayed the latest trends and colors. On the tables, new shoes and the most popular comic character lunch boxes awaited eager buyers. Cash registers were set up outside the stores to facilitate transactions so patrons didn’t need to enter the crowded shops to make purchases. They’d all be cleared before parade time but added to the festive atmosphere. But none of the sidewalk sale items appealed to me, so while Mother fussed over clothes for my brother and two sisters, I went straight to King’s Department store, where stacks of notebooks with gold covers, tightly spiraled wire bindings, and clean, mark-free pages tempted me to fill them with stories and ideas.

I was fascinated by the courage and adventure of the Mercury astronauts, so I wrote my first story as a short report about John Glenn and his three-orbit space flight. I admired the speed and innovation of Craig Breedlove, so I followed up with another story about him and his Spirit of America rocket-powered car, which failed to set a world land speed record in 1962. My third-grade teacher praised both reports. I was hooked.

Over the next few years, I filled pages of notebooks with stories: highly imaginative fan fiction, deeply expressive poetry, utterly captivating short stories, and a naïve but ambitious spy novel (or so I believed). Yet, I concealed most of my creative writing under my mattress, the weight flattening the spirals of the notebooks like pancakes, unsure if I dared allow anyone to read it and counter my opinion.