By Sarah A. <mishmish.a@hotmail.com>
Rated: PG
Submitted: July 2008
Summary: A sequel to "Her Reason," where we get to read the reason why and how Clark became a writer.
***
I love words. Plain and simple. I've always loved them for what they can do. For what changes they can make. A simple word can change everything. A small sentence can make the biggest difference.
Some people think words are just letters mixed together to mean something. I never thought so. I've always thought they were something more. I can never explain it because it's beyond everything I know, well sort of.
When I was young, we had those little magnetic letters stuck on our fridge. I would mix them together to make a word, and then my mom would come and make a much better one. You have to understand that at that time I was only seven or eight years old, so my vocabulary was pretty limited.
And it became a ritual between my mother and I; everyday after breakfast we'd play around with the magnets. I would use words like 'Fox' or 'Home' and my mother would use such as 'Beauty' or 'Unique', and she would teach me what they meant. Everyday there was a lesson in front of the fridge for some time. Until one day, I had come prepared for our game. I had heard someone say it, and I thought it was a smart word: 'Destiny'. But she said there was no lesson today, and that there was nothing to teach anymore. That she had run out of words. That she had run out of sentences to write.
Reading has always been a hobby for me. At first I started to go and borrow one of my dad's books from our library, so I could find some words for our game in front of the fridge. But the words were too complicated for me and were too big for my liking.
Soon, my mother started bombarding me with books and novels and the like. I, of course couldn't complain. I loved every single one of them. Devoured them wholeheartedly every time I got a new book, and used every second of my time reading them and finishing them.
I think it was at my teens, when I got my abilities, that I got to be a serious reader. So I would seclude myself from fear of hurting anybody, most of all my parents, that I would dive myself into one of my novels and imagine myself in one of the many characters. Or I would just hope that in actuality I'm just a character in someone's novel. That I was a fictional character and not a person with bones and flesh and blood running through my veins.
With time, I got to become stronger and got more abilities, the type that you wouldn't believe. That were humanly impossible and I was the only one who had them, as far as I knew.
I don't quite remember how I wrote my first story. I don't remember how it all happened. It was just too easy that I didn't pay attention to the time and place, where and when it all happened. It felt so right. It all felt so instinctive.
I remember it was about a dog named Spot who lost his home, and went for years trying to find it, searching everywhere for a place that felt like home. Spot never did find it. But Spot never gave up hope, and died years later still trying to find his place among the many animals.
It all fell into place after that. I started writing on a regular basis, usually writing til the break of dawn, while I watched the sun rise on the barn. Watching the sky turn from a dark, fiery red to a clear blue sky with my old journal in my lap.
It felt so natural, just as natural as lifting up a tractor with my bare hands.
One of the things that I love about writing is the fact that you get to create your own world, a world where it only exists behind the readers' eyes. Only a writer can paint a masterpiece with his own words. A world so perfect, the reader would wish to live in it and become a part of the beauty that the writer's words have created. To open doors that were once locked in a person's mind is just a great privilege to have.
But that's not the only reason I became a writer. It's also helped me in too many ways to remember, or even care to remember. It's almost therapeutic to me. It helps calm me down when I'm stressed. I vent in my writings, I unleash my demons when I start writing a piece. It's definitely a calming influence in my life.
It's proof of what I've done in my life; that I'm not just a farmer's son, or a boy who's lived in a barn most of his life. That I have a purpose.
It's what makes me feel human.
THE END