Who remembered? Not me!
Back when I was 19-20 years old, right before I moved to New York City from Ohio in late 1980, I took a short-story writing course from the Writer's Digest people. This was a correspondence course -- done with a teacher through the US Mail. Nowadays, they do these things online, through email. But in those days, thirty years ago, it was done by Pony Express . You worked on your assignments, then you waited for the guy with the pony to come by, you gave him your parcel and he rode off with it all the way to Seattle (my teacher lived in Seattle. I don't remember her name, I only know she lived clear across the world from me and was about 100 years old).
This was the only formal training I had as a writer, this Writer's Digest course. In elementary school and in Junior High & High School (that's right, I'm almost older than the concept of "Middle School"), I wrote short stories, songs, plays, & poems on my own, with the guidance of an English teacher. But during the correspondence course, I made one very serious attempt at writing a bona fide "serious" short story. (And it wasn't at all erotic. In fact, I stopped taking the course b/c I kept wanting to make all my story assignments erotic -- for some inexplicable reason -- and I found this fact about myself so disturbing & confounding that I finally dropped out of the course and stopped writing fiction for about 5 more years.) (And then when I started up again, I let it rip, erotically-speaking, and the rest is history...)
Well, who knew (or remembered, anyway) that I had made a Xerox copy of that "first serious story" and mailed it to my favorite Uncle down in Richmond, Virginia??? Well, guess who's visiting right now from Richmond, Virginia??? And not only did he buy a copy of my current novel, Freak Parade at Barnes & Noble (bless his heart!!), he walked in the door to my humble home yesterday with a very old-looking manila envelope and he said to me, "Wait until you see what's in here."
There were a couple things in there, actually -- one was one of the many story/art projects I had made for him over the years (this particular one I'd made when I was 24 and living with my friend David Ashley down on E. 12th Street in NYC) and it was so fucking funny that I had tears streaming out of my eyes from laughing so hard. But the other thing was -- yes, you guessed it -- that Xerox copy of my first short story!
Good God, I had no idea that a copy of it still existed anywhere. I've moved so many times since I was 20 years old. I have only had enough courage (so far) to read the first 2 pages, but I'm working up my nerve to read the whole thing. So far, it isn't all that bed. (I did get an "A" on it, btw.)
Isn't it just uncanny how many, many, MANY things from my past keep popping up while I'm attempting to write my memoir from that period of my life??? It is like magic, gang. Gifts from the Universe all over the fucking place.
This was the only formal training I had as a writer, this Writer's Digest course. In elementary school and in Junior High & High School (that's right, I'm almost older than the concept of "Middle School"), I wrote short stories, songs, plays, & poems on my own, with the guidance of an English teacher. But during the correspondence course, I made one very serious attempt at writing a bona fide "serious" short story. (And it wasn't at all erotic. In fact, I stopped taking the course b/c I kept wanting to make all my story assignments erotic -- for some inexplicable reason -- and I found this fact about myself so disturbing & confounding that I finally dropped out of the course and stopped writing fiction for about 5 more years.) (And then when I started up again, I let it rip, erotically-speaking, and the rest is history...)
Well, who knew (or remembered, anyway) that I had made a Xerox copy of that "first serious story" and mailed it to my favorite Uncle down in Richmond, Virginia??? Well, guess who's visiting right now from Richmond, Virginia??? And not only did he buy a copy of my current novel, Freak Parade at Barnes & Noble (bless his heart!!), he walked in the door to my humble home yesterday with a very old-looking manila envelope and he said to me, "Wait until you see what's in here."
There were a couple things in there, actually -- one was one of the many story/art projects I had made for him over the years (this particular one I'd made when I was 24 and living with my friend David Ashley down on E. 12th Street in NYC) and it was so fucking funny that I had tears streaming out of my eyes from laughing so hard. But the other thing was -- yes, you guessed it -- that Xerox copy of my first short story!
Good God, I had no idea that a copy of it still existed anywhere. I've moved so many times since I was 20 years old. I have only had enough courage (so far) to read the first 2 pages, but I'm working up my nerve to read the whole thing. So far, it isn't all that bed. (I did get an "A" on it, btw.)
Isn't it just uncanny how many, many, MANY things from my past keep popping up while I'm attempting to write my memoir from that period of my life??? It is like magic, gang. Gifts from the Universe all over the fucking place.
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