“It was then that I felt, with sinking certainty, that I had left the world of sane and reasonable men, where science ruled and entered instead a world of gibbering madness where only the capricious whim of Elder Gods held sway.”
Matt Converse
My head is full of things like this. Stuff that comes bubbling out in the oddest of moments, burbling out at the slightest of provocations. My computers (desktop and laptop if you must know), my phone, and every available scrap of paper in my life are filled with scribbled notes about ideas for stories, poems, songs, vignettes, novels, and movies. This is my home for them while I learn and hone the craft of writing. This is my place to share these odd bits with you, the unwitting public.
I’ve had a love of stories since I can remember. As a child, my mom read novels to my brother and I at bed time. When I learned to read, I read everything I could get my hands on, a habit encouraged by my mother whom herself was a life long addict of the printed word.
I read comic books, novels, text books, the backs of cereal boxes, anything with words in a row. But I always came back to stories.
I love stories. I love hearing them. Seeing them performed. Seeing them on the big screen. The cadence of them read aloud. I love listening to strangers in bars tell tall tales about their adventures. I love telling taller tales about my own. I love the laughter, the shared joy, the darker emotions of a tale of horror. I just love stories.
At last I had an outlet for telling stories. Stories that had heroes, villains, adventure. Stories that flowed out of me and into the minds and collective imaginations of countless friends. Stories that felt good and were fun to tell. Stories that made people angry or sad. Stories that kept friends coming back weekend after weekend to take part. But that still never quite scratched the itch in me to tell ‘real stories, you know, like you read in books.’ In short, I wanted to write novels.
Wanting to write, writing, and being good at it are all three separate things. Some people go their entire lives telling everyone around them how much they want to write, and never put pen to paper, or fingers to keys. Some people crank out volumes and volumes of words, but never manage to tell a story worth reading. Still others crank out completely serviceable news articles, essays, college papers, or the occasional poem, but somehow never quite push themselves over the top and become a master of their art.
I think I’m in that second lot. At least, for now. I’ve got stories inside me. I’ve got a keyboard. And now I have a place to put them. I want to hone my natural bent for telling stories in to real skill at telling them.
It’s time to let the stories out.
Matt Converse
May 2021 Update: I am still alive, still struggling with fiction. However, I write every day. I’m gainfully employed as a technical writer who has written the equivalent of 42 books since 2015. Fiction on the other hand? Not going so well. More updates sometime.
