Dr. Strangelove

The first story I ever wrote was a story about a boy named Jason Parker. It was a handwritten work of fiction unlike anything I had done previously. Normally, my overly active twelve or so year old mind would've probably done something else. We were between video game consoles at the time, so I didn't have hours to kill upping my K/D ratio. This was before the dawn of kill streaks and attack dogs, and prior to the age of supply drops.

Prior to that, I can't say I was much of a storyteller and could never see myself around a campfire with Joes and S'mores. This quite unexpected piece of fiction dropped out of nowhere, and I'm not quite sure what actually inspired me to write Jason's tale: an eleven year old kid who puruses the neighborhood, is injured in a car accident, and has a vist to Heaven.

I'm not even sure what I was doing at the time. And that's exactly why it was special. In twenty-eight pages, I had transported myself into another world. I sat out, and wrote the whole thing, by hand, with a number two pencil. I had no clear idea of where I wanted to go with the story, and around page 11 the story started to come alive. It made me want to continue.

To date, I might not be able to tell you every line in the story, or much between A and B in the matter of plot points. But that's what's special. It stuck with me. I know it had run on sentences. If I discovered it again today, busy bee me would promise myself to input it into the computer. It would sit on my hard drive, until workaholic me got around to it.

That's a lot of what fiction is about. The story writing itself. When it stops being work, and as an author, and you just find yourself listening.

While my next endeavor, the 50,000 word behemoth I've yet to edit, would come around ten years later, this perticular piece of fiction has still stuck with me, and probably always will. So Jason, while you might or might not get a sequel. Hats off to you for being a springboard.