Why do I do it ? Well I guess it’s because I have the « urge ». The urge to create.It has taken many different guises. I just can’t fight it. As a toddler, I invented stories to tell the local pharmacist to get free treats. Always had a fertile imagination as a kid. There’s something both comforting and exciting in living in a world that you have made up exactly as you like. Then I started growing up and it all went downhill! I wrote my first love song to an unexpecting – and underwhelmed – crush when I was probably 12. Wrote a few rap songs then started break dancing, performed to a few audiences but mainly copying popular moves (windmills, waves..) Then 4 or 5 years later, I caught the novel writing bug. Most people want to write because they love reading and want to copy their favourite authors but for me it was different.
I was in Guadeloupe. A hurricane was ravaging the island so we were all barricaded inside the house, waiting for it to pass.
Hurricanes bring another world to your doorstep. Power is cut. Water is cut. It’s actually like you’re stuck in a time warp, back a few hundred years, no running water (well running alright but not from the tap), no TV, only light you have is produced by candles…
Somehow this hurricane inspired me to take my fountain pen and my schoolboy book and start penning this dark story about a guy with an odd genetic flaw that provided him superhuman strength but that was accelerating his aging process. Its in French, and unfinished by the way – as are my other 3 subsequent projects.
I have been waiting for another hurricane to inspire me to finish them. I don’t actually need a headline material hurricane. Just a storm will do (a brain storm ?) :P
But writing has taken a different meaning as I have come of age. I used to write songs mainly about imaginary situations. All my songs are now drawn from life experience. And my objective for my novels is to pass on a message. Not sure what message yet but it will come to me….some day….hopefully !
If you want to write but are a bit stuck like me, why not write a piece about how you first got "the urge"?
If you want to take it further, create a video about it free on Animato like I did!
Make your own slide show at
Animoto.
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