Starting a career at age 21

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Go Bobcats! (Photo courtesy www.economics.gcsu.edu)

While most people were off at college, I was…well “off at college.”

The smell of the newly laid granite and concrete will forever stay with me. Sadly, I can’t say the same for the subject matter of the classes I rarely attended.

I can chock it up to partying and whatnot, or relationship drama, but the fact is – I just wanted to live.

I had been imprisoned as I felt it for my entire life with responsibilities to raise my younger siblings and to keep the peace in a tumultuous home. It’s not that I didn’t have fun – I had a great life for the most part. But I always felt those obligations and issues were huge walls around me. Walls that friends took years to get through, and relationships never broke through.

So when I got to college, I felt so incredibly free. I was a creative writing major, and loved it. For anyone who hasn’t taken any creative writing classes – TAKE ONE. You write so freely on one-word subjects like “home” or “window.” People write mini murder mysteries, some write anecdotes from fond or foul memories, or some write some eye-opening realizations. Everyone takes the subject into a different direction.

I felt so free in spirit, duties, and in writing – my most favorite thing.

So long story short, you apparently can fail for a lack of attendance. C’est la vie.

Fast forward to three years later, and I’ve got a career.

I’m 21, and like most Washingtonians, I’ve landed a salary gig with benefits.

The Cherry Blossom Festival. DC can be a lovely place to look at. (Photo courtesy http://playingintraffic. wordpress.com/)

It blows my mind every day as to how I got here, and in the way of our parents – sans a degree.

It’s a reincarnation of my dream job – a novelist. I’m currently a writer on a weekly newspaper. What’s those?

Part of my fascination of my current paycheck-rendering pretense [just kidding, it's a tough job] lies in part in the fact that I…am a Plathist.

That means that I’ve got an acute form of…PLATHISM. Gasp!

The best book ever written, of course. (Photo courtesy http://jonotjoe. wordpress.com)

If you don’t know who Ms. Sylvia Plath is, you’re missing out. In any case, she destroyed a good bit of her work for a multitude of reasons – relationship issues [bastard husband], mental crises, rejection as a writer to name a few.

I’ve written hundreds of things thus far – the beginnings of novels, plays, poetry…all scrapped and shredded. Sometimes burned in true Plath fashion.

Now the best advice anyone can give you as a writer is to not think, but to write. Damn them. I write, and write, and write…til I’m about 60 pages in, and then…I destroy it. Not immediately, but eventually, it happens.

I’ve got an idea that I’ve been kicking around for a epic novel, but really – what does it matter? There are millions – billions? of writers just as I am, writing better probably, who have not only written, but have CREATED – that’s really what good writing is. JK Rowling is a perfect example. A whole new world she created based on an old idea of wizardry and witchcraft. Kim Harrison did the same, and her books are phenomenal. What is there left to create?

That idea, that everything’s already been done, and done better, is what keeps me to my destroying habit. It’s a good thing, I have to believe, and one day [maybe soon?] I’ll be attributed for not only writing, but for creating.