How and Why I Write

People always ask me, “When did you start writing?”  I always answer succinctly that I started when I was 13 years old.  What I don’t talk about is the why and how I started my stories.  So I will tell you now.  It was a really rough time in my family.  My father was downsized from his job and no one was hiring.  He was too experienced for most jobs or simply too old.  It was a less politically correct time.  He had been out of work for over a year and as the breadwinner things were really tough.  We were going to lose our home and the future was very dark.  Now add to this a thirteen year old boy who was severely depressed and was told by many he had a gift for writing.  We lived in a condominium above a highway near Toronto Canada.  I sat on my chest of drawers and watched the cars go by in the rain.  I’ve got to do something or I’ll go crazy!  I know; I’ll write a short story just for me.  No one else needs to see it.  During this time in my life I was reading epic fantasy and playing Dungeons and Dragons with my brothers.  My genre was clear.  Then I needed a main character.  I didn’t want a human because everyone writes about humans.  I thought strongly about an elf but envisioned them as frail and generally weak.  Then I thought of a half elf.  I got in at least one fight every day at school because everyone wanted to be the one to beat up the American.  If I was successful then they would send several people to bring me down.  My father was originally Canadian and never believed Canadians would act that way, regardless of the bruises and sprains.  I lived the life of a half breed and could pour this into my character.  Then I wanted him to go after something of great power.  Obviously I couldn’t choose a ring.  Swords had been done to death.  I wanted something that could have an opposite.  Then I thought of gemstones. I always liked blue sapphires but I needed another color.  I ran into my brother’s room (Google before we had Google) and asked him if there was a red sapphire.  He explained that technically there was but they are simply called rubies. I hopped back on the chest of drawers and rested my chin on my fist as I thought.  There had to be a way to make this work.  Then I came up with the idea for the great sapphire Prism of the Cosmos of which two pieces of equal power would be broken off and so on.  There was always lined paper around the house.  I started writing an outline and I soon found that I had the makings of much more than a short story.  I was writing a book.  The more I wrote, the more ideas came to me.  And that is how a 13 year old started his series of novels.