My first clue that I would love to write came when I started to write short stories in school. While many of my classmates struggled through and barely finished their stories, I was done with mine and working on more at home. I loved it. When it came time to turn in my first piece of creative writing I had six from which to choose. I never stopped writing after that. There were times when I did very little, or tried to write other things, but I was always writing something.
The time I had to write short stories varied, and even though I wasn’t always writing them, I was always thinking about them. Perhaps it was easier for me to deal with things that were not real, and lives that were not mine, rather than to deal with what I was living back then. I think a lot of people start to write short stories for this very reason. Someone once said to me that you can be a good writer until you live a life less than ordinary. If you don’t have heavy things to work through, what do you have to write about or what would you dream about?
I don’t know if that is true. I think it’s hard to gauge what makes a writer a good one. I think there is something to be said for strife. Though you don’t have to have bad experiences and hard times to produce or write short stories that will knock someone’s socks off, I have to think that it might not hurt. You can write short stories about kittens and knitting, but they only reach so far. There is something about humans that leads us to want to read about the darker side of life.
No matter what you have been though, if you want to write short stories you should do so. You may find that you love to write, like I did, or that you have a talent for it that you never knew was there. You don’t have to go out and get published or win awards to write short stories, you just have to do it. That’s the great thing about writing. You don’t have to be published to enjoy it or to get any sort of meaning out of it. Anyone can do it, but not everyone can make a living from it. Go ahead and try it, you may be shocked to see what you will write.
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