From a very early age I used to love to write stories. They started off a short stories with illustrations (which I suck at) and as a teenager became full blown novels. By my teens I had convinced myself that I was to become a novelist, I had all these ideas and was convinced that I had the skill and talent to make it in the world of literature.

It all started when my teachers discovered I was dyslexic, I have a form of dyslexia called world blindness which means my brain doesn’t actually register I have spelt something wrong. Over time I have managed to (sort of) over come this but it was this problem that lead to my dyslexia teacher saying I had a knack for writing stories. 

It was this “talent” that lead me to believe that I might have a future as a novelist and I spent a great deal of my time working on various novels. Now we all know that teenagers think they know everything and I was convinced I would be the next big thing; as I am not typing this from my beach front house in the Caribbean I think it’s safe to say that didn’t happen, along the way I just stopped writing. I don’t have an answer as to why and that saddens me, I’m sure I could attempt to justify why if I wanted but the truth is I just gave up.

It’s not all doom and gloom though, part of the reason I began this blog was as a way to get my creative juices flowing again. I think part of the problem was a lack of motivation, so having to sit down at least once a week and write something is very good at overcoming that obstacle.

When the idea for this blog came to me I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some of the novels kicking around on my hard drive and see if any of them were worth salvaging,  as you can expect there was a lot of cringe worthy stuff including these gems.

  • A story where myself and all my friends had superpowers.
  • A sequel to the second Drangonlance triolgy
  • A fantasy novel where the main character spends all his time sleeping with the female characters in the book but still somehow has enough time to defeat the bad guy.
  • A Star Trek/Star Wars cross over. (I’m sorry, I’m so sorry)

However among all this rubbish I found something with promise. It seems at the end of high school the idea of loosing touch with my school friends played on my mind. I wrote a story about a teenager who is hit by a car and  falls into a coma for 18 years, when he wakes up his friend have all grown up but he is the same age.

Now the story itself is pretty shaky but the idea has got me thinking again. What if I started it in the past and the future was the present day? I could drop the not aging angle and have him as a literal man-child, a 30 year old guy with a teenagers mindset.  What of the fallout? What happens to a group of friends when the one thing keeping them together disappears. More to the point how does this affect there lives when he returns?

I’m rambling, I know but I think trawling through these old books has reignited that long dead spark of creativity.  So if there is a point to this blog I think it’s this;

On the whole your younger self knew jack, but sometimes, just sometimes, one or two of their ideas might actually be worth a damn. And if that’s not an excuse to never fully grow up i don’t know what is.