How the light bulb went off for me

by Rick Blechta

If you haven’t yet read Tom’s delightful post from yesterday, do so now!

I’m certain if you asked nearly any writer about when the writing light bulb went off in their head, they could probably tell you. Me? Not really.

You see my bulb must have come with a dimmer switch set at 0, and it only gradually began creeping up to full “you gotta notice me” brightness when I was nearing 40 years old. Let me explain.

Even as a youngster, I loved making up stories. (Lots of us can say that, Blechta!) More often than not, I would only do it in my head to amuse myself, but occasionally I would share my imagination’s output with family and sometimes friends. Some of those thought I was kind of weird. Perhaps I am…

My 4th Grade teacher, Miss Wenzel noticed that a) I always had my nose in a book, and b) I was very enthusiastic when it came to writing book reports. For a boy in 4th Grade, I guess she was amazed by that since I wasn’t all that enthusiastic about any other parts of the curriculum. It was her who gave me an extra credit assignment to write a small story.

Because I’ve always had trouble with the concept of “short”, I handed in a story about a chipmunk. It was 14 typewritten pages. You can imagine how long it took me to do that since I’d never used a typewriter before. So the light bulb was getting brighter.

In high school I got asked to write a review of the school musical by the local newspaper. (My first byline!) I guess it went well, because I was asked to do it again the following year. Sadly that run ended right there because I was in the musical the third year and I didn’t think it would be seemly to write a review of a production I was in. I mean a headline of “Blechta steals the show!” probably wouldn’t have garnered me any friends. But the brightness of the light bulb was definitely up.

In my first two years at university I wrote some reviews of concerts, a few of which got published, I even got paid for two! (What a concept. You could actually make some money putting words together.)

What turned the light bulb to full brilliance after so many years was artistic boredom.

In the late ’80s after a number of years doing music 24/7 as a performer and teacher, I burned out. Don’t get me wrong, I still loved my musical life, but I found I was just doing too much of it. I needed a fresh artistic outlet.
After casting about a bit, I sat down to write a baseball short story. While it had some artistic merit, I wasn’t all that great. But I had thoroughly enjoyed the process.

Since I’d been voraciously consuming mysteries for many years, I began another short story. As I said above, I have trouble with short, so when I finished my narrative a few hundred pages later, I had a full-blown mystery/thriller on my hands that I titled Knock on Wood. Its weaknesses are very evident now, but the narrative does contain a few strong points.

However, the end result was…I found myself wanting to continue writing crime fiction. And with that, I was off!

What’s your story?