How I started writing

My fiction writing journey started in the second grade. My mother joined a book club at the local supermarket and started bringing home classics like Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson. She encouraged me to read them so I could “better” myself…whatever that might have meant to a second grader. While I loved the cover art on those books, the writing style and language were quite challenging and I soon grew tired of stopping to look up words in a dictionary. Then, one  day my father brought home an old typewriter he found in a junkyard. I was fascinated by its mechanical aspects, and all the cool noises it made, but couldn’t figure out what to do with it. There are only so many times one can type “the quick brown fox jumped over the fence.” Anyway, that machine sparked an idea that led to my first experience in fiction writing…sort of. I’d read a paragraph or two from one of those classics, and then rewrite them, changing words and story to suit myself. I’d type a page or two at a time and leave my work on the kitchen table for my mother to read. Encouraged by motherly praise, this continued for a week or two…until some more interesting activity caught my attention…but that was the start.

By the time I was in high school I was a voracious reader, and my favorite assignment was writing book reports. Writing book reports wasn’t exactly writing fiction…it was more writing about fiction… but it led to my second …sort of…fiction writing experience.

Not all of my friends shared my enthusiasm when it came to these assignments. Some would procrastinate until the day the report was due, not having even opened the book they were supposed to write about. On those occasions when we were free to select our own book, I’d sometimes write the reports for them…in the cafeteria…usually on the day they were due. I’d make up the book’s title, author, plot…everything…over the course of twenty minutes. And they actually received decent grades on them.

After high school my fiction writing and general creativity went on a four decade hiatus, but my appetite for reading fiction grew. The more I read fiction the more I wanted to write it. Ten years ago…fueled by conversations overheard…and characters observed…in a Florida bar, I decided I would write my first novel. Eight years later, with many stops and starts in between, I finished the first draft.

It took much too long to write that first draft, but I was hooked on writing…fascinated with being able to create something from nothing…to take a raw idea and play with time, space, characters and events…and build it into 300 pages that can provide a reader with a few hours of escape and
entertainment.

My second novel was drafted in less than a month…and is currently being revised and improved with the invaluable help of my critique group.

- Joe Demasco