snow day

Today, we're going to take a break from your usual programming, and in lieu of a somewhat educational, writerly type post, this will be somewhat personal. Read on at your own risk.

Even though I'm grown, and I no longer get the satisfaction of no school on snow days, I still have to fight the urge to go build a snowman. I want to make snow ice-cream, build an igloo, and just go outside and play. Unfortunately, I am at home by myself, and my dog hates snow.

I need children. Then I'll have an excuse to be excited about snow again. And Legos. And Hot Wheels. I need children so that I can acceptably see children's movies and not look creepy, so that I can be excited about summer vacation, and so I can build an effing tree-house.

There is something just magical about being a child. I feel bad for people who had rotten childhoods, or don't remember how better the world was as a child. I feel bad for children who can only think of how much they want to be adults. They don't understand that you only get to be a child once. I'm extending my stay as best I can.

When I was little, I spent my summers and afternoons at my grandparents house. They lived on a couple acres of land with a creek running through it. My grandfather had a shop full of all sorts of old stuff that we weren't allowed to touch (we did anyway). My cousins and I had four-wheelers to ride around on. We built several shoddy tree-houses. We built a go-cart, danced to music in the carport, and filmed family documentaries. We shelled peas, picked plums, and husked corn. We explored the seemingly vast woods next to my grandparents' land.

In those woods, we became new people. We weren't just kids. We were explorers. We were hunters, war veterans, velociraptors, injuns, and kings and queens. It was amazing how we shed our identities when we entered the woods. It was those times at my grandparents' house that I remember best as a child, and it's those memories that I'm trying my best to keep alive.

I write for children because I am a child. I remember the magic of stumbling upon a hidden world of make-believe. Now that I'm grown, I can recreate that magic. I can build the worlds I wished existed when I was a child. I can create the people I would have befriended and those I would have fought against. I can save the world.

My writing exists as a window into other worlds. That's the truth of it.

Of course, I would love to sell that window so that other people can experience it too. I would love to make a living from writing. But in all reality, the stories I write don't exist for a publisher's pocketbook; they don't exist for readers.

The fantasies I write exist for me. And I think that's what is most important.