Writers write, and other ideas of imagination

A 10-day look at the journey to 60 years of living through memory and song.

 

DAYDREAM BELIEVER
THE MONKEYS

Cheer up, Sleepy Jean.
Oh, what can it mean.
To a daydream believer
And a homecoming queen.

I’ve gone to sleep as long as I remember by thinking about new stories, usually sports stories, that I have never written. Imagination rocks me to sleep. I’m not at all sure how many people do this, but Simon Pegg (writer, actor) says, “I used to lie in bed and imagine what would happen if there was a zombie attack.” Pegg is the writer/actor in one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen, Shaun of the Dead.

The much used quote that applies, I reckon, is “There are those who look at things the way they were and ask why…I dream of things that never were, and ask why not.”

I really do see things differently, rightly or wrongly. It’s part of my DNA.

Oh, I’m a lot of things. A big ol’ blob of contradictions that I never planned nor have ever been able to get rid of.

I learned to read by pouring over box scores in the local newspaper. From there, I moved on to deep philosophical fodder -- comic books.

I had the first Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Avengers, Iron Man, X-Men. I remember with great joy sending off to become a member of the Mighty Marvel Marching Society, a fan club that Stan Lee began in the 1960s. Why Marvel? Good question. I reckon it was because all those guys had some sort of problem to deal with. They were super heroes with a dash of real in them.

Then came those great books about detectives, the Hardy Boys (and on occasion a Nancy Drew), those books about sports, the Bronc Burnett series, and those about whatever in the heck Doc Savage was.

There was a time when during the summers I stayed at my aunt’s house during the morning, then walked blocks to get to the Meridian Library where I spent a couple of hours. I finished the day with a movie at the Royal or Temple theater. Then I finished the walk to my mother’s employer, Meridian Shirt Factor.

I read comics until I was in my 30s, I guess, till the prices became too much. Then the Marvel movies, always a Marvel guy for some reason, came and I’ve been in a continual re-living of my childhood since. I remember my mother on many occasions lecturing me that I should stop reading so much because nothing good could come from that.

Ironically, from my reading came my writing, and a career that in some ways still goes on.

Mark Twain said of imagination, “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

There was a time when I couldn’t see beyond the window to my bedroom in a tiny village called Lizelia, Miss. I had no real plans to go anywhere or do anything. I remember tearing up as I thought about saying goodbye to my friends in high school one evening. I visited New York City when I was 13 and 14, and I thought I would go there. I’ve never been back.

Years later, I worked in Nevada for 10 of the longest months of my life, but couldn’t cut it that far from my heart and my home.

But in my imagination, I’ve traveled a million miles. Carl Sagan once said, “Imagination will carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere.”

Always my imagination bled words, taking me to places I will never go.

Truth is, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t a writer. That seems very disingenuous, but so help me, it’s true. There was a time when I couldn’t write, print, type or anything like that, but I was writing in my head, in the depth of imagination.

When I was three, I looked at the air vents at the top of the bedroom where I was lying, and I swear to this day I saw the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz looking in. I had never seen the Wizard of Oz on TV at the time. Remember it mostly like it was yesterday.

When I was five, I was convinced I could be Superman, the George Reeves version. I was looking cross-eyed at the steering wheel in the family automobile, seeing through a second version of the wheel, convincing myself that I had X-ray vision. I was putting my hand toward the wheel to see if I could see through it, and I knocked the car out of gear. My father had to chase the car down, running from inside a store to do so. I ran around with a towel clamped to the neck of my shirt, and once dove off the top of a car. Didn't fly all that well, literally. Remember it mostly like it was yesterday.

When we moved to the country when I heard something outside the window of the room I was sleeping in for one of the first times. I crept into the kitchen and to this minute I will swear that I saw the door handle moving. My mother told me to look out the window and see what it was, after I had awakened her. Yeah, right. Never did. Never would. Still have a thing about looking out windows at night. Something might just be looking back.

My cousin, June, took me to a bunch of horror movies when I was young. I ran out of the Temple Theater during the middle of one of them. After another, I was afraid to go to the toilet by myself for weeks. I was sure that something was going to come up out of the toilet.

Somehow I got a typewriter passed down to me from June when I was 13. I began writing my first book immediately. As I recall, it was about a summer TV show called Coronet Blue. I took the premise and made it my own. I think I typed, at a glacial pace, six or seven pages. I couldn’t think of more than that. Today, as readers are aware, I can’t stop.

I wrote short stories in high school, poetry in college, songs while riding in a delivery truck for a Meridian construction supply company one summer. And there was sports. I wrote a book about our unbeaten baseball team when I was 15. I wrote my first article for the Meridian Star, the hometown newspaper, at the same age. Even though I had nary a clue what I was doing, the story ran pretty much intact. I still have it somewhere.

I wrote a roundup of conference football results as a senior in high school for the same newspaper, and the next fall worked for the newspaper as a correspondent. And through it all, I’ve dreamed. I never accomplished all I should have, I guess, but most don’t.

All in all, though, I’m just the kid who lay in bed at night and looked out the open window on the full moon shining like the waves of a pond on the pasture that led to the road that would take me out of Lizelia. I’m never going to be Wolverine or the Thing from the FF. I’m never going to be Johnny Bench, the best catcher I ever saw, or Pete Maravich or Archie Manning, the heroes of my youth.

But I’ve stood in the center of Archie Manning’s childhood home while researching a story on Drew, Miss., that turned out to be one nominated for an award as one of the best sports stories of the year a while back. I’ve interviewed Maravich’s son about growing up with a legend. I once called Johnny Bench on the clubhouse phone for a story I was working on.

Years ago, I wrote a short story called Laurie's Eyes, which was my telling of a story that my mother told me tons of times. It was a story about death and a rider who came through forecasting that death. A horror mag picked it up, then had the audacity to go out of business before it published.

I sent that story to Stephen King. I got a postcard back in the mail with advice about writing. All I remember is this: A writer writes. Don't stop for anything.

I’ve worked for most of the small papers in Mississippi, a large one in Nevada, a larger one in Louisiana and the largest one in the country, USA Today. I've written four books, two of which were published. One is a novel about demon possession and the ultimate protection against such. It was turned down by every agent I could find.

Somehow, though, it's the writing that pleases, not the selling of the writing. Yesterday this little blog passed 25,000 page views in three years over 900 plus blogs. I'm grateful for the readership. But it's all because I have imagined more than I really am, certainly more than I could see.

Some call what we do, or what we attempt to do vision. Walt Disney, who saw much but not all of the incredible achievements done in his name, reminded us “Never forget, it all started with a mouse.”

My life really has been about the little things that made a difference. I’m certain I’m not alone.

C.S. Lewis said, ““Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”

I pray that’s true for us all. Life is lived out beyond the norm.