In keeping with this week’s theme, here is how I found my way into the writing life.

Writing is criminal. Wait, hear me out. It didn’t always used to be this way. Once upon a time I didn’t even know this could be a viable path for me. Growing up it wasn’t given as a possible “when-I-grow-up” scenario: firefighter, police officer, doctor. Those were the acceptable career choices.

Sure, I wrote stories through grade school. I even won a poetry contest in the third grade. Even so, I didn’t see writing as something I could do when I grew up. I never looked at who wrote the books I enjoyed as a child. They simply existed for my pleasure. That changed by junior high. It started with MadeleineL’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time and snowballed with Piers Anthony, Douglas Adams and Dean Koontz.

My junior year I wrote a story for English that failed to make it back to me when the rest of the class received theirs. Rather indignant I insisted to Mr. Smith that I had turned the paper in (cough not that I was prone to missing assignments cough). He told me he was having some other people read it. Two days later he gave it back and told me to polish it up and submit it for the school’s annual magazine. He guaranteed it would get in. Had I been more diligent in editing and less concerned with social aspects of my high school career, I might have made the deadline and started my writing journey much younger. Procrastination robbed me of potential success.

Regardless, I knew then what I was destined to do. “Where do you see yourself in five years?” Be it guidance counselor, parents, or potential employer, this question came up, and the answer was always writing. And though I spoke it loud and clear to anyone who asked, it took me almost eight years to learn my first lesson.

Writers write.

I kept daily journals, but I never wrote fiction. The realization came in the midst of a wife I supported while she attended school, a new son who ate everything from baby food to light bulbs, and a job change to better accommodate our family. That’s when the stealing began.

I stole time to work on my writing. It started with an evening here and there at a local coffee shop. It wasn’t enough. I signed up for a creative writing class. Entry level, but I needed it. It sparked idea after idea. I signed up for another class. Eventually the classes weren’t enough. I sought out other creative types to meet weekends to discuss our own works. A coffee-house latte is much cheaper than a semester of tuition, not that I was willing to give that up. I found the Amys and we worked together to better our writings. Hands down, that was the smartest move in my writing life.

The Amys aided and abetted my first novel. They kept me strapped to the chair through the entire first draft. That’s when life happened.

To better support my family, I accepted a job offer within the company. The transition was big enough that I had to drop a semester of classes, cut back on the number of meetings with the Amys, and ultimately stopped editing and writing. Life on the straight and narrow. At one point I even resigned that this was how it had to be.

The itch wouldn’t go away. Even though I didn’t write them down, stories continued to play out in my mind. I went back to class. The Amys welcomed me back. I began a new project and dusted off my first manuscript for some serious edits. I was stealing again, but life likes it on the up and up. It threw me another twist.

Four days ago my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. What better time to clean up my act, forget about this writing nonsense. I can’t. Not this time.

This time I’m stealing more creatively. Under the guise of changing the office into a nursery, I’ve converted our shed into a writer’s haven. All my plots are devised there now. I’m learning to accept twenty to thirty minute blocks of time in lieu of three to four-hour chunks. Instead of letting the Amys down again, we decided to serialize our exploits. Nothing keeps you writing like a deadline and the guilt of letting someone down.

It’s a continual struggle, and I’m choosing to keep it criminal. I’ll share here all of my struggles along the way, triumphs as well as set backs. We all struggle. Let’s do it together. How does life smack around your writing? But more importantly, how do you smack it back?

- S. C. Green [normally your Friday host]

Criminal writer, irredeemable