by Crymsyn Hart
Over the weekend, I was doing a lot of cleaning, getting down and dusty. While I was cleaning, I came across some of the stories that I had written in high school. I took a moment to go through the short tales. It got me to thinking about the people in my life who had been influential in helping me write and encouraged me to do so.
During middle school and through high school, writing was a way for me to cope with the reality of the my chaotic environment. My friends always lent me a kind ear. My teachers always told me I could do what I wanted. My family stood beside me through the years, but it was my grandfather who really encouraged me to keep on going.
When I was twelve, he set up a small space for me in his office, in the attic, so that I could write during the weekends that I would spend with them. So during the hot summer hours, I’d retreat up there with his electric typewriter and start tapping away at the keys. He would read everything I wrote and kept on encouraging me even though much of my stuff was about vampires. He asked me once when I was twelve, why I loved vampires so much. I shrugged and told him I didn’t know. I just loved them and I would keep writing about them as I got older. He dutifully told me that my likes would change as I got older and I would probably move out of the faze. After I had several works published that he had read, he told me he didn’t mind reading what I was writing, but he just couldn’t stomach any more vampires. That was something I brought up again a few months before he passed away. He chuckled and said that he really wanted me to finish this one piece that I had done when I was in high school. Out of everything it was his favorite. A young adult fantasy novel about a girl who steps into another world and discovers that sorcerers and unicorns are real.
Well, this was the very thing that I had come across when I was cleaning this weekend. Years ago, he had printed out the massive volume and went through and edited it for me hoping that one day it would see the light of day. It was up on my shelf in two huge three ring binders. Before he passed away, it was the one thing he insisted that I really focus on.
So these past few days, I’ve been flipping through the pages he marked and am finally seeing where the story should go from here. It’s been collecting dust for way too many years to count and I pluck at it once and a while. But for him, I’ll finish it and see it done. All because he was the one who was there for me and always encouraged me to keep on writing. Vampires or not.
