Damn you, Scarlett!

If you really follow back the inspiration for this blog all the way to its dark, warm core, you'll come out to my Junior English class in high school. The year prior, I had started to think that perhaps not all books we were forced to read were awful--maybe not the Baby'sitters Club, but altogether not awful. Then came Scarlett, the best-damn English teacher the public school system has ever seen. It was up to her to teach us everything from Gawain and the Green Knight to poetry to the marvels of modern American literature. Putting it mildly, I was hooked, like a 12-year-old feeling the power of progesterone for the first time. The main culprit was the first novel of an American female writer called The Bean Trees. This 336 page bolt of lightning dropped into my hot little hands with the force of a good smack across the face. I loved it. I still love it, and have come to the conclusion, through devouring every other thing this author has written, that my inspiration was a combination of the author's own life experiences and stories, blended with a dash of imagination. Rereading a collection of autobiographical essays by this same person enforces this notion, as the details she chooses to share in essays from 1991 show up in her masterwork, published 7 years later. Not only did I gain a favorite author, I discovered what writing style was. I have since closed many books and thought, "I could write something like this." After having countless article ideas, novel ideas, and just a general ache in my fingers whenever I see a blank page, I decided, to hell with this. I'm going to start a blog. I'm not some hardcore tech person, I can recognize HTML but I couldn't write it if I had to, so I don't know that I'll be starting my own domain or anything, but this is good enough for now. I simply plan on writing what comes to my brain. Some of it will be poignant, some of it stupid, some of it outright false, but it will be mine. I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read it, but I'm not really doing it for that either.

Thanks, Scarlett. You're awesome.