Meteor Shit

I'm a writer. I also like to draw pictures and play games, but the thing that makes me get up in the morning is the need to tell stories. Goddammit if I don't love telling stories.

Here's one now:

I had no notion of Stephen King as an honest-to-god real life human being until I saw the movie Creepshow on HBO. Jeez, I'm guessing this was around 1984 or '85.

I'd read a few King books.  The Stand, Carrie - I'd seen a few movies.  Even at around 12 years old, I was a huge fan of the man's work.

Then this bumbling, backwater idiot comes on-screen and finds a meteor rock in his back yard. I nearly shit myself when I found out it was the man who'd written all those stories I'd loved - who'd scared the shit out of me with vampires and psychic weird girls and all sorts of things that go bump in the night, even when you know they're not there.

It was amazing to me (I still hadn't quite gotten a handle on the whole notion of "acting") that this moron - this country bumpkin could do so many amazing things with his typewriter.

That was probably the first time it occurred to me that I might want to be a writer.  It was only a passing fantasy - at that point I was still hell bent on being Luke Skywalker when I grew up, or maybe a Motorcycle Stuntrider; but it would come around again and again, usually carried to my doorstep by Mr. King.

When I accidently bought On Writing because it was a new Stephen King Book. After I finally finished It. The first time I read the Gunslinger. Firestarter made me want to tell stories almost as much as it made me long for psychic powers - and a Shop against whom I could wield them with impunity.

There were others, of course, Tolkien, Piers Anthony, Michael Crichton, Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut...

All great writers -great tellers of tales- and all had a hand in forming within me the desire to write; but it was Stephen King who really inspired me and handed me the tools with which to chase that dream.  Because it was King who filled my head with monsters and aliens - King who wound up an imagination already set on fire by the likes of Star Wars, Indianna Jones, Dungeons & Dragons and Elf Quest - and convinced me that paper burns better than anything else when it comes to campfire stories.

That last bit is a little muddled.  I got lost along the way.  Stephen King made me believe in books.  Made me believe it enough that I wanted to write my own.

Only time will tell if I'm any good at that; but I'm enjoying the doing of it almost as much as the finished work, so fuck it.  I'm not gonna stop.  And I have Stephen King to thank for that.