June 1, 2012

• How my Writing Grew Dark

    I've always had a knack for creative writing and I've wanted to be a writer every since I can remember.  When I was a kid, I would write about typical girlish things.  There would be princesses, fairies, and the occasional witch that always lost in the end.  That is until the first time I read Edgar Allan Poe.  I was in the second grade and we were visiting my relatives in Boligee, Alabama.
  
  (source AL-DOT website) Boligee is one of those places that will make you hear the Theme Song from the Movie Deliverance.  It is one of those places that when you drive over it on the freeway you wonder where all the people that are driving the cars live.

  
   Image Source. It makes me sad that they've graded the backyard and "the pond" will no longer be a part of our lives.  The kids loved it.  It makes me laugh how much people try to fight mother nature.  We live in a swamp, get over it.  I wasn't kidding when I told my Northern Facebook friends that I didn't understand their fascination with Swamp People b/c I could find those guys in my backyard (there used to be a restaurant that advertized gator soup on the window).

  Back to the point.  So back in 1982, when I was visiting relatives in Boligee, I was bored.  Extremely bored and my allergies and the heat kept me stuck inside.  My mom had packed the novel set she bought for me.  I didn't think I would read any of them since there weren't any pictures, but boredom can drive you to do crazy things.  I started with Mark Twain just because everyone said good stuff about Mark Twain.  I liked the stories, but I was unimpressed.  I barely made it through Oliver Twist and Moby Dick made me want to stab my eyes out.  Only when I was a child, I wouldn't have expressed my feelings that way.  I may have been cynical, but I wasn't morbid.  I hate Moby Dick so much that I elected not to read it in my college literature course because even if I failed that test, I would still have an A in the class.  In fact, I would have opted to get a B instead of reading that story.  The last author that was left was Edgar Allan Poe.  I thought, "who is he?"  "why haven't heard of him?"  "most important,  what is wrong with his eyes?"
  
  I didn't remember any of my teachers talking about Edgar Allan Poe.  They should have.  He is a better writer than Mark Twain.  I read the Raven first and I liked it.  Then I read the Telltale Heart and I was in love. 

   
  (Image Source)
  I even went into my grandparents' bedroom to get the copies of his short stories that they had.  I felt ripped off when I read the full versions.  It was then that I thought....THIS is what I want to write.  I wanted to be able to create words that would haunt people and stay with them forever.

  I tried for a long time when I was a child to be like Edgar Allan Poe in my writing.  I thought about all the tales my grandparents would tell me, the ghost that rose from the grave to steal your fingers, haints, you know those disembodied spirits that sit in the middle of roads waiting to suck out your breathe, Grimm's fairytales (the originals not the American and definitely not Disney's versions), the devil disguising himself as a white dog to tempt children to play with him, and of course the Bible as told through the mouths of demented Southern preachers.  I still could not do it and I knew it.

  The problem was I didn't have any life experience of my own.  It wasn't until I was in high school that I started to find my voice.  I used to share my stories with the other students in my classes and they loved them.  I would share them here,  I still have a couple somewhere, but I don't think I could ever just type them the way I original wrote them without feeling embarrassed, but then again, maybe I can remind myself that people grow as life brings more experiences.  Perhaps I may have been more talented in high school because I could still create stories around characters who didn't have troubled lives.  But for now, this picture depicts the protagonist of The Crazies perfectly.
  
  In my mind she did not have any particular race, but I saw this image (source) that was taken in Boligee, Alabama and I thought, now she looks like a woman that ain't going to die with her top off.  Now, I can't disassociate this image from my character.

  All of the images I have been showing have been pictures of places in Alabama (except the beer can one, that was actually New Jersey) and I should have linked their sources, but I didn't.  The ones that I said were Akron, Alabama are actually in Akron except the downtown picture, that is Northport.  At the time, I couldn't find a picture of Akron, but this is what downtown Akron actually looks like.  There are so many towns in the South that look like ghosts.

  
  (source)  However, Northport is more romantic looking so I am keeping it as the setting and calling it Akron.  I think Northport is what people imagine when they think of the South (outside of Swamp People obviously).  In towns like Boligee and Akron, save for the few families with "Old" money (and wealthy to middle class people who move there to buy the old homes for cheap), if you were to tell a true tale of the people's lives who live there it would be a story of the poor vs the really poor.

  • 2:49 pm
  • 21 Comments