About Me, Part Two

I wrote a lot in high school. In my first year there I happened to meet a kid that I instantly hit it off with - we seemed to have a lot in common - we were both into computers (such as they were back then), superheroes, reading just about anything that we could get our hands on, and Dr Who. We wrote a bunch of Dr Who-style fanfic back then - most of it involving Time Lords other than the Doctor. It helped that we had an English teacher that gave us one class a week to write in, but we were filling notebooks with stories, regardless. We also worked on a comic together, some simple superhero stuff that was rather quite derivative in retrospect (we were 13 at the time, so cut us a little slack) as far as the type of heroes and villains and powers that they had, but the stories were always something new . He was the more artistic of the two, so by default got to do the artwork, and we both worked on the stories. It was good fun. It was also when I was introduced to RPGs. I had a lot going on in those days, I guess.


Between writing fiction, writing and playing RPGs, working on comics, and reading anything and everything that came my way, I became more and more convinced that this was something that I wanted to do one day. Of course, it's not that simple, and school careers counselors will try to do the right thing and point you towards a good university and a career. Somehow I picked an Arts degree, and decided on Philosophy - so much for that plan, eh?


When I finished high school I bought a Smith Corona Word Processor. Thinking back, that was a stupid move. For the $1,000 I spent on that, I could have got myself an older PC, which would have kept my computer skills up, and given me something other than a glorified typewriter. Of course, I could have studied Law or Engineering or Journalism, as well, so there's not really much point dwelling on the past, I suppose.


I met a lot of interesting people during my university days, wrote a bit, submitted some of my stuff to the university magazine, played some music, and wrote a bunch of songs (all of which were lost when the cassettes that they were recorded on were melted). I wrote lots of everything, I suppose - fiction, plays, poetry - across as many genres as I could. Some of it wasn't bad stuff. Some of it definitely deserved to end in a pyre. Some of it was pretty good, and I wish I still had copies of.


Since then, I've kept writing, and I suppose that's the important part. I've met a bunch of people that tell me they'd love to write (but don't), or have tried writing (but stopped), or wish they had the time (who play a lot of games and watch a lot of movies). At the end of the day, if you want to be a writer, you write. If you want to do something else, you do something else.


So, that's me, I guess. Well, the parts I'm going to talk about, at least. I've got to keep a little mystery to myself, right?