Interview Question Two

2. When did you realise that you had a talent for writing and what is it about writing that fascinates you?

I've always been a wordman--"better than a birdman," to quote the Lizard King. Ever since childhood I've been fascinated by words and the power they have. I wrote fiction and poetry through high school, and then abandoned it after my not-graduation. After all, who was going to pay me money to write? The army was a better idea ... so it seemed.

Fast-forward about fourteen years. After leaving the army, trucking, and failing engineering, I was signing out of the school. This called for a visit to my Technical Writing prof.

"You're leaving?" she asked sadly.
I affirmed that this was so.
"That's a shame," she said, "You were one of the best students I've had in ages."

The light didn't dawn right away. I signed out and left. But I mentioned her remark to Mum, who didn't quite slap me upside the head:
"Then be a writer!" she said through teeth I think she had been gritting for about a decade and a half.

Not certain of myself, and not without a little maternal prodding, I went to visit my prof again. After some discussion, she suggested a program at a college on the mainland. It was while attending that program that I met the woman who would eventually be sufficiently foolish to put up with me for the term of one of our natural lives.

My fascination with writing begins with nuance. How the same set of words or phrases, arranged differently, convey such different meanings--or the same one. My favourite English phrase is possibly "Homeward the ploughman wends his weary way," because you can rearrange it in a surprising number of ways:

Homeward the ploughman wends his weary way.
The ploughman wends homeward his weary way.
Wends the ploughman his weary homeward way.
The ploughman homeward wends his weary way.
The ploughman his weary way homeward wends.
His weary way wends the ploughman homeward.
His weary homeward way wends the ploughman.

And so on.

I enjoy and admire a great storyteller. A truly great story can transcend language. The simplicity of Stephen King makes his tales that much more gut-wrenching. Hardly a three-syllable word to be found in 'em.

On the other hand, the fancy, storied, multi-adverbéd tales of Kipling and Haggard are the bread and the meat, the warp and the woof, indeed the very pretzels and beer which have heretorfore propelled me through this mysterious gathering of linked threads that form the great glowing tapestry of creation.

A lousy story, written prettily enough, may also transcend its shortcomings, if only for a short time. Otherwise a hell of a lot of stuff would never get published. Except possibly on blogs.