Can't Stop

When I was very small, I loved stories. My big sister would put her arm round me and read to me. Dad would sit on the end of my bed and tell fantastical tales, night after night. These are some of the happiest memories from my childhood.

Mum was an English teacher, and she could often be found with her nose buried in a novel. Detective stories were her favourite. There were book shelves along every available stretch of wall in our house. Suffice to say, I grew up knowing stories are important.

Do you remember the story of the girl with the red shoes? She couldn't stop dancing. That one unnerved me a little. There was supposed to be a moral lesson, but I can't remember what it was, or what the poor girl even did to earn her fate. Something to do with vanity, probably, or being careful what you wish for.

I turned the page with a slight shudder, and read the next story.

I grew, and I devoured books, one after another. Like the famous caterpillar. On Saturday, I read one Roald Dahl, one R.L. Stine, one C.S. Lewis, one Brian Jacques, and quite a bit of the Lord of The Rings trilogy. Then I built a special cocoon around myself, and read some more.

I forgot all about the girl with the red shoes.

I don't know when I decided, consciously, that I wanted to write stories like that. Maybe it's an urge you get after you read that much. You have to excrete something, or you'd explode.

But at some point, that was all I could think about. I wanted to write. I wanted to write really well. I wanted to make a living off it. A real living, not a hand to mouth starving artist existence. I wanted all this very much, and I was determined. 0bsessed, even, to tell the truth.

I wrote as much as I read, if not more. At work, I'd beaver away on my notepad, and not just on my break. On dates, I'd dig out a pen and scribble on the back of my napkin.

Now I think about it, it was a soldier who enchanted those shoes. I'm not sure I've met a soldier, much less given him my pen to curse. Maybe I cast the hex myself, somehow. Unwittingly weaving a trap for myself day after day...

If I don't post tomorrow, it will be because my arms are sore and bloody stumps, and I have carved and polished wood where my hands should be.