Today I am going to talk about my husband which has to do with writing a lot.
Here he is taking a picture of himself while on a campout:
I first met Cam on a blind date set up by his friend Brian because Brian was worried about my love life because I dated guys who called me “dawg.” To me this was normal boyfriend behavior but apparently Brian though it was inappropriate/disrespectful/not-romantic. So he said “I have been putting this off for months but I can’t hold back any longer. Can I give your number to my friend.”
How do you react to a comment like that? Why was he putting it off for months? Why was he holding back? What does it mean?
Anyway, I handed over the number without too much expectation (remember the bar was not set incredibly high) and forty eight hours later he was knocking on my door.
At the time I had a celebrity crush on this man:
Points for anyone who can name him.
Given this information, you can imagine my reaction when I opened the door and Cam was standing there. I can distinctly remember wishing I had flat ironed my hair. He was that good looking. Since that night our lives have never been the same. The first time he kissed me, I slapped him. The second time he kissed me, I told him to get out of my house. The third time he kissed me, it stuck (not literally–come on). We’ve had our ups and downs. Sometimes I’m a little irrational. But for the most part, we are happy. Seriously happy.
What does this have to do with writing? Well, it’s a saga equally engaging but not really. Here’s the thing: I am not one of those people who always knew she was going to be a writer. I didn’t write novels through junior high, I didn’t carry a notebook around with me at all times, I didn’t write passionate things about passionate feelings in my journal. In fact, in college it never occurred to me that I’d ever want to be a writer.
And then someone set me up with creative writing. At the time I was in my second year in graduate school and my emphasis was composition and rhetoric. I was doing fine and minding my own business when one of my professors, John Bennion, suggested I try my hand at personal essay. There was a contest and the winner got to read in front of a crowd.
I thought, eh? Why not.
It was then that I wrote my first real live creative piece: an essay about my best friend Millie.
I am now going to say that the experience of writing that essay was euphoric.
I’m serious.
Up to that point I had never had so much fun, laughed so hard, or learned so much about myself (and how narrow-minded I was). And it was only ten pages. In ten itsy bitsy pages, my whole life changed. After that I switched my emphasis to creative writing. I wrote a novel, it got rejected. I wrote another one, it sort of did too. I wrote a third, and it stuck.
Now writing is one of my main passions. We have our ups and downs. Sometimes I am EXTREMELY IRRATIONAL (and I am not going to put a link here because it would basically encompass my entire livejournal plus every future post on this blog). But for the most part we are happy. Seriously happy.
Throwing Up Words 