Writing appears to be a talent that I have lost after decades of neglect. I was once an administrator for a forum of writers - what happened?
I’ve always had a fond spot for writing from a young age. In fact, I owe my love of writing for my entire career in programming. You see when I was 9 years old I joined a forum, “Future Writers”. A hodge-podge of young adults and teenagers who shared a love of writing. The second youngest person I knew from the site was a teenage girl from the Netherlands, Hannah, who was 14 at the time. In fact in the mailbox of my first ever email address, one that my mother had helped me create, I still have an email from her with a poem that she wrote. Way back in the before times of 2007.
Don’t worry, like nearly all of my contacts from 2007, her mailbox no longer exists. In the infinismal chance that someone reading this might know Hannah please tell her to email me I’d love to reconnect and chat how our lives have gone these past 17 years.
Where was I again? Right. So here I am at 9 yeasr old on a forum full of aspiring writers. Reading all sorts of edgy Tumblr-esque poetry and writings and sharing some of my own. I still have a written copy of one of my short stories titled “Flatline”. It’s about two young lovers who are so close that they were said to share a heartbeat. They have a short highschool fling and life drifts apart. The story is told from the man’s perspective with his heartbeat growing ever more frantic as he searches for her in their small town. The reason he is searching for her is because he felt his heartbeat quickening and realized she was having a heart attack and he wanted to see her once more. He never does find her as her heart begins to slow and then finally flatlines as she passes away. At that same moment, he collapses forward in the street and dies.
A bit edgy? Sure. The above is but a short summary and not the actual story, which is about 2 pages long. Having read it back to myself some time in my adulthood I was rather impressed with 11 year old me at coming up with the concept but also writing a remarkably realistic highschool fling and how life often finds a way to separate young couples and the pain some of those couples carry with them at a love that might have been.
Meanwhile I can hardly write 3 coherent paragraphs for this blog. What happened? Well I think it is mostly that I had stopped writing for nearly 20 years. That is certainly a cause of why one’s skills might diminish. So I wish to write once again. Whether it is about banal things, rants, short thoughts, where I belong in the world. Whatever.
I also need to start reading again. I would read often as a child and as an adult I tell myself I give myself the self-fulfilling prophecy of not having enough time or attention to read. Because I don’t set aside time or dedicate my attention to reading. The way to becoming a better writer involves an awful lot of reading - and while I do still read constantly I am not reading the type of materials that would help me become a better writer.
I write mostly for myself but it would be nice to engage with an audience one day. Although I cant expect anyone to ever read or engage with my blog when my writing leaves quite a bit to be desired. It would do me good if I could organize my thoughts to be coherent and well-structured. So that is what I want to do.