I have a very vivid memory of sitting in a first grade classroom (first grade was my first actual classroom because my mom homeschooled me for kindergarten) thinking “I am literally going to die, I can’t live one more minute without reading a story, but I’ve already gotten my book confiscated for peeking at it during class and I have no backup book and I’m going to die” and then thinking in a burst of divine inspiration “WHAT IF I TELL MYSELF A STORY INSIDE MY HEAD. THEY CAN’T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME. PHYSICALLY THEY CANNOT.”
they could not
That’s how it begins
Yup. That is indeed how it begins.
There are other beginnings, including: “Why are there no more stories /in this world /about these characters? I will make up my own!”
And the one that got me going, back in the late 1970s: “S/he wrote this s/hit and got paid for it? I can (to quote @dduane) eat a ream of typing paper and barf a better story and ALSO get paid for it!”
What goes on inside your head can’t be taken away, and often the only frustration is realising you’ll never get it OUT of your head looking as good as it was while it was in there. But you’re in good company… :-)
There was a British comedian and variety performer called Max Bygraves, whose catchphrase (they all seem to have had catchphrases) was “I wanna tell you a story…”
That would be me; is the price of my story better value than the price of a beer? (A Robert A. Heinlein saying.) To which I say - you can read a story twice, but you can drink a beer just once. (Yes, I know - but I’m not going there.)
Those are all of my reasons for writing. I’m finally getting off my ass and editing one of my 3+ novels now, so maybe I can get paid for that.
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