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LJ Idol 9.0: Introduction
Mar. 5th, 2014 05:00 pmHi, my name is Alex, and I've got a compulsion to write.
It started when I was a child, when a shadowy character wearing a fedora and a trench coat lured me from the safety of the school playground, wrapped my fingers around a piece of chalk, and pointed me at a pristine brick wall. Thus was I tricked into departing from the norm, into writing something on my own, and the rush was overpowering! There followed more pieces of chalk—all free, of course—until there came a day when a piece of paper and a pencil were shoved into my hand.
I still remember the hypnotic intonation in my "pusher's" voice when he—or maybe it was she—hissed, "Here, take these for a spin, kid." I did, and from that point on, I was pretty well hooked. I started skipping lunches to have enough money to buy memo pads and pens—oh, the feel of a 19-cent BiC pen against paper was like nothing else! Nothing!—until I got caught in Weiss' Stationery & Office Supplies, laying out the big bucks for a Moleskine Classic notebook and a Sheaffer fountain pen. How I wished, then, that I had listened to the police officers who had repeatedly visited our school to scare us straight with descriptions of the various ways we could become hopelessly enmeshed in writing, with as little as one published article leading to a lifetime of addiction.
Pens gave way to a Smith-Corona, and paper eventually gave way to phosphor. WordStar became my mistress and my confessor. A series of moderate successes at placing magazine articles and writing a book on programming just poured fuel on the fire, until I was helplessly trapped with a permanent, nagging compulsion to write, and to do so again and again.
With me, thank goodness, the compulsion has been both a blessing and a curse, though on the whole the net benefits have wholly outweighed a chronic gnawing itch that will not allow itself to be scratched. It may be that I've just not tried hard enough to scratch it, or perhaps the itch serves a completely different purpose altogether. ¿Quién sabe?
Today, my writing implement of choice is a keyboard, and fortunately, between what I do for a living (translating technical documents from Russian into English) and my LiveJournal (created back when membership numbers were four digits long), the itch has remained under control. Participation in previous editions of LJ Idol has also exerted a positive influence in this regard, as have imaginary telephone conversations with characters from my favorite movies.
But I'm saving that story for later.
Good luck to everyone!
Cheers...
It started when I was a child, when a shadowy character wearing a fedora and a trench coat lured me from the safety of the school playground, wrapped my fingers around a piece of chalk, and pointed me at a pristine brick wall. Thus was I tricked into departing from the norm, into writing something on my own, and the rush was overpowering! There followed more pieces of chalk—all free, of course—until there came a day when a piece of paper and a pencil were shoved into my hand.
I still remember the hypnotic intonation in my "pusher's" voice when he—or maybe it was she—hissed, "Here, take these for a spin, kid." I did, and from that point on, I was pretty well hooked. I started skipping lunches to have enough money to buy memo pads and pens—oh, the feel of a 19-cent BiC pen against paper was like nothing else! Nothing!—until I got caught in Weiss' Stationery & Office Supplies, laying out the big bucks for a Moleskine Classic notebook and a Sheaffer fountain pen. How I wished, then, that I had listened to the police officers who had repeatedly visited our school to scare us straight with descriptions of the various ways we could become hopelessly enmeshed in writing, with as little as one published article leading to a lifetime of addiction.
Pens gave way to a Smith-Corona, and paper eventually gave way to phosphor. WordStar became my mistress and my confessor. A series of moderate successes at placing magazine articles and writing a book on programming just poured fuel on the fire, until I was helplessly trapped with a permanent, nagging compulsion to write, and to do so again and again.
With me, thank goodness, the compulsion has been both a blessing and a curse, though on the whole the net benefits have wholly outweighed a chronic gnawing itch that will not allow itself to be scratched. It may be that I've just not tried hard enough to scratch it, or perhaps the itch serves a completely different purpose altogether. ¿Quién sabe?
Today, my writing implement of choice is a keyboard, and fortunately, between what I do for a living (translating technical documents from Russian into English) and my LiveJournal (created back when membership numbers were four digits long), the itch has remained under control. Participation in previous editions of LJ Idol has also exerted a positive influence in this regard, as have imaginary telephone conversations with characters from my favorite movies.
But I'm saving that story for later.
Good luck to everyone!
Cheers...
