42. The meaning of life in author Douglas Adams' eccentric universe lies somewhere near the number 42. Of course, this is the same universe in which the earth is destroyed to build a highway through the solar system. Writing sometimes makes even less sense, and the answers tend to be just as twisted when pondering the big question. Why do I write? You won't find The Writer's Guide to the Galaxy in the following pages, but I will try to explain my desire to write, and the force that fuels it. No, 42 isn't even close.
Curiosity is my adventurous side, leading my desires and turning my questions into answers...sometimes. Most neurotic perfectionists, myself included, hate confusion. I want to know how and why things happen, and it has to make sense. Curiosity and the desire to write share an intertwined relationship, as the impulse to discover leads to answers, which in turn lead me to write. This pushes me to dig deep into "why" and to comprehend the strangeness around me.
Sometimes the most peculiar things happen, things that make you stop and ask yourself, "huh?" Recently, a friend and I were walking down Tate Street when this man ran up to us, stopped, and started barking. He circled us like prey, sized up his competition, then decided he'd better run into the pool hall and grab a bunch of magazines instead. Sure, you could blame any number of mental disorders, but the sight of a sweaty, balding man barreling at you like a not- so-golden retriever puts life in a new light.
Curiosity always managed to get me into trouble, especially as a young child. When I was three, my mother was in charge of the church nursery during mass. Most of the kids were playing with Lincoln Logs and Betty Poopypants, but something on the wall caught my eye--a little red box the size of an 8-track with a white lever. Knowing that red meant "pull," I gavethe lever a good yank. If i'd known at the time that setting off the fire alarm during mass would be a problem, I might have given it a second thought.
The congregation burst from the building like frightened rabbits, looking for the faintest sign of smoke in the air. Luckily, the fire department quickly fixed the problem, which my mother somehow masked as an accident. A few other alarms have been pulled and a few of the wrong doors at the mall opened since then,but the same principle is always to blame--curiosity. The need to know "why" is, in essence, the lifeblood of writing.
We write to discover, to explain, and above all, to understand. What better way is there to find out what a fire alarm does than to pull it? Curiosity sparked my interest in writing sometime in the third grade. Each Monday in english, the students would take plain sheets of paper, fold them in half lengthwise, and draw half of something on one side. Being my favorite animal at the time, I decided to put a squirrel's head on one side of the crease. We then exchanged papers and filled the remaining halves of each other's papers with different ideas, connecting the two into a single being.
This was the tricky part. Someone else had to complete your original brainstorm, leaving you to write a short story to explain what you saw. My Frankenstein was half squirrel and half cardinal. Lucky me. My writing glands salivating, I was dying to get home and write. I was truly excited trying to explain what I saw, dreaming up absurd ideas and reasons. Greenpeace couldn't have been more interested in explaining how this mutation could happen than me, and the answer was equally thrilling.
Fused by a nuclear accident, the squirrel/cardinal was discovered by a daring young man (we'll call him Paul) and separated again by an act of pure genius. Mrs. Shaw loved The Squirdinal, my first short story. So with this two page paragraph about a boy, his furry woodland pal, and a lightning bolt named Boffo, an author was born. This was easy, not to mention fun. What could possibly be so difficult about writing?
I must have forgotten to knock on wood that day because the answer was waiting deviously for me the next Monday. Having filled half of my page with a tank, I was ready to write the greatest two pages of fiction in Hemmeter Elementary School's history. The God of Panic laughed and shoved something that was half tank and half tree in my face. The idea was repulsive, and the story stunk like week-old tuna.
The hex got worse every week, and by Christmas I had given up writing. I packed away my parents' warm advice and my pledge to be a writer into my Transformers lunchbox and put it on the shelf. There my ambitions stayed, collecting dust as I shied away from creative writing. I tried for years to ignore it, but once you're sucked into writing, you're a club member for life.
The questions filled my head again, my mind begging for answers. I kept asking myself why some people barked at each other and who made those little plastic things on the ends of our shoelaces. I had to make sense of life the only way I knew how, on paper.
The one-two punch of curiosity and desire sculpt my interest in writing. However, they don't coexist without a rough patch or twelve, which can be downright frustrating. Writer's block gets so harsh at times that TV/VCR repair seems to be the only way to keep myself sane. Sometimes i'm just not in the mood to answer the vioces in my head. Writing isn't easy, but it feeds my thirst for knowledge and understanding, keeping me alive and wondering. I can abandon it, but in the end, curiosity will grab me by the shirt collar and force me to listen.