I've always been a storyteller. I remember times in my childhood, when the cousins would gather around and insist that I tell them stories. We sat on the stairs and I made up tales that kept them enthralled. The parents didn't mind, as long as I didn't tell anything too intense for the smaller kids. I was less than ten years old; I didn't know anything that intense.
In junior high school, I began reading more. The fact that people could be published for these stories fascinated me. It didn't matter. I needed to get my head out of the clouds. Still, when my friends engaged in role playing games, they wanted me to create the scenarios. Mine were more complex and inventive.
Then I got older. No college for me; I had work to do. It was real work, not that fanciful stuff. I still have notebooks from those days. The stories were interesting, but the writing style was poor. It really needed work.
Eventually, I joined my first writers' group. It took years before I could write very well. My stories were often technically correct, but the readers could not relate to them. Then there came a breakthrough. The group discussed how all of these Great Authors all had various forms of depression. Then they talked about how all of members also had some form of depression or other. I was the exception, since I tended toward the other end.
That night at home I immediately attempted to think depressing thoughts. It was tough. Every time I started to feel completely bummed, I would get excited about it. It didn't take long till I gave up on that. I decided to write a short story in first person where the character was depressed and I would just have to fake it. It was the best received of any of my stories. People could relate and I had learned a valuable lesson.
It didn't matter, of course. I still had real work to do and could not be wasting time on the writing nonsense. That thought was still dogging me, as it does to this day. Long periods of time will go by where I grind away at my "real work" and my writing goes undone. The stress builds until I finally realize the problem. A few hours at the keyboard or scribbling in my notebook and the stress is gone. I am a writer by nature.
Now I'm trying to train myself to see writing as real work, to overcome that negative image placed in my mind so long ago. It's nothing for me to put down thousands of words a day or to create large and complex worlds, when I take the time to do it. I need to channel that into something productive and, hopefully, something that can pay the bills. Time passes and leaves age in its wake. I really need to do something with this writing thing before I have a wake of my own.