The Misadventures of a Wordsmith column
by Georgia L. Jones
“Happy Birthday”
“9-21”
I’ve always believed that reading is as important a part of writing, as the actual writing is. As an avid reader for most of my life, I’ve always enjoyed the darker genre’s that have a base rooted in horror and fantasy. Whereas I must admit that all fiction is actually fantasy, something about the unimaginable creatures that seep evil from their very souls is intriguing and at the very least keep me turning the pages in anticipation. It’s what I’ve read the most of and what I’ve written the most of, over my life.
The biggest influence I’ve had in this genre is the very recognizable name of Stephen King. When I first began to read his work it was in the form of a girl named “Carrie”. An older girl who had been sitting next to me on the bus accidently left it in the seat. As my far too young eyes read through the words they became wide with fear…I was hooked. I spent most of my teenage and young adult life searching for and reading everything I could find from Mr. King. As I turned the pages of “Needful Things”, “Salems Lot”, “Children of the Corn”, “It”, and of course that list could go on and on, I stumbled across another author that I loved, Richard Bachman. At the time I had no idea that the words were penned by the same man. The similarity in style, had I been more observant, would have been a dead giveaway. After reading “Thinner”, I was scared to eat pie for a good six months. The only other thing that had imprinted such delightful fear on me had been a cat named Church. I should have known then, but didn’t make the connection.
I recall how I had dreamed, as I reached the end each book, of how wonderful it must feel to create such a work of art. I had wondered what inspiration had spawned such plots that spiraled into such tragedies. I wondered how it would feel to actually transform an ordinary house pet into a “Church” and I couldn’t help but to try. Stephen King was one of the greatest inspirations that I experienced as far as reading goes. He inspired me to create dark scenes from my mundane surroundings.
The only series that I didn’t read intentionally, and I feel I should make note of, was “The Dark Tower” series. I had believed it to be nothing more than a western dressed up with some horror and westerns were never my cup of tea. I was well into my thirties by the time that I had picked up “The Gunslinger”. It took me about a month to devour the series, but I read them all. I couldn’t believe I had ignored such a creative and riveting series based on a pre-conceived idea. That particular series changed my views on writing in several ways. I found a new aspiration for the level of writing that I would like to achieve. The worlds that were shaped, the characters that were transformed, the objects that were put into motion, all carried a phenomenally majestic purpose. The books were so captivating that I felt near guilt as I turned the pages, as if I wasn’t showing as much appreciation as was deserved. I thought of the design that the author must have had to lay out to keep each detail in order and on track and what a daunting task that must have been. I truly found a new respect for writers with such in depth plots and another aspect of ambition to reach for. “The Dark Tower Series” ended up being my favorite collection of books from the genius wordsmith that I hold the utmost respect for.
As I allowed my creativity to take hold in my favorite genre of dark fantasy, my research has taken me to many places. One of those places I found somewhere in my late twenties. While reading a biography of Stephen King, I found out that he and I not only share an obvious love of wordsmithing in a similar area of mysterious darkness, we also share a day of birth. As Mr. King, being born in 1947, was celebrating the day that he could legally partake in the nectar of Ancient Kings, Vikings, and Irishmen, (also known as alcohol), I was taking my first breath into a world on a day that would certainly be called the last day of summer, September 21st.
As I stated in my previous article, I have always written…it’s just what I do. There is something inside of me that drives me to put words on paper, to document the world as I see it from a perspective that is skewed, ambiguous, and encrypted with only hints of the world that everyone else sees. I write to try to make sense of things that makes no sense and to allow a glimpse into worlds that are created through daydreams and nightmares.
Thank you for taking the time to read my column…I hope you stop by again.