I was listening to a podcast in the shower as I often do on a Saturday morning. I like to take nice long, hot showers on Saturdays and really let the dirt and grime of the finished week get washed down the drain. This particular shower, I listened to the latest episode of Whiting Wongs with Dan Harmon and Jessica Gao; it’s very good, and I’d recommend it. On the podcast, they give lots of advice to aspiring writers in addition to their discussion of all the race and gender issues within the industry. I listen to it mainly because I like Dan Harmon and hearing his unfiltered thoughts on a lot of touchy subjects, but I also listen because for a long time I’ve considered myself a writer.

Why would I consider myself a writer? That’s not what I do for a living, at least not the primary function of my job. I’d say it definitely started in high school, probably tenth grade English class. For the first time I wasn’t just crapping out assignments with as little care as possible, I was really enjoying writing. And it wasn’t just creative writing either. Even doing critical essays about books or plays we were reading was enjoyable. That class was also my first taste at screen writing and film making. These passions would continue to blossom until senior year, when I really had a lot of freedom in making my class schedule. I took the standard English class, as well as a creative writing class, and I joined the school newspaper, and signed up to be a teacher’s aide for that 10th grade English teacher that sparked the fire.

I spent most of that year doing writing projects and generally loving being a senior. It helped that I had figured out how to not take any math or science classes. My absolute favorites from that year were making a semi-autobiographical movie with my friends, becoming editor of the school paper, and writing a musical about not wanting to end up in my adult life stuck in a cubicle. That last one, as I’m sure anyone could guess, is a theme that will arise fairly regularly in future writings and a large part of why I so desperately need some sort of outlet. I don’t know if anything I wrote was particularly good, but I can now confess I proudly got a perfect score on a paper about a book I did not read. Writing was just fun. I was either using elegant prose to attempt to prove a point about something being discussed in the classroom or putting my silly ideas for a short film to paper.

I’d like to say this interest grew and was my focus in college; I did minor in film after all. However, despite taking a number of writing classes of various purpose: general creativity, detective fiction, screen writing, and writing for business (not as bad as it sounds), I found it fell into the background as I was more inclined to social activities. No, my desire to write didn’t grow. It lingered and festered beneath the surface. College felt like a 4-year long water slide, at the end of which you are unceremoniously flushed out into the open waters of adulthood. Before I could even realize what had happened, it was over, and I despite all my kicking, screaming, and musical writing was stuck in a cubicle.

Anyway, on this episode of the podcast, the two hosts were discussing what kind of writing habits they had when they were about my age trying to improve themselves. It turned out that both of them had used daily blog writing as an outlet to practice their craft. After hearing that, there was no doubt in my mind that by the end of the day I needed to make a blog and start writing. I’ve been out of school for about three and a half years and haven’t written a goddam thing. That ends now.

Here’s a link to the podcast mentioned since they got this ball rolling:https://www.acast.com/whitingwongs/19-ihatewriting-ilovehavingwritten