creativity

I was lying in bed last night thinking about how while commercial website stuff is easy as pie, sometimes I have a really hard time being creative 8 hours a day at work whenever I'm assigned to do a travel guide. I mean really... there's only so much you can do to make 13th-century history "come alive," a dusty archaeological museum seem like a "can't miss" or a Spanish language course (the one commercial page and therefore whole purpose of each 100-page guide website) sound as exciting as a wild night of debauchery on the town. I myself prefer to limit my vacation to non-educational activities like eating, drinking, snapping a few photos and being a haughty American tourist.

So somehow that led me to thinking about how I used to write stories non-stop as a child. At the time I thought I was destined for awards... that my novels would line bookstore shelves... that people would cry over the heart-breaking dramatic scenes and chuckle at my witty way of describing amusing encounters between the well-developed and devilishly attractive characters. The words flowed from my magic marker onto the construction paper like fudge onto an ice cream sundae.

Back in the care-free days of Flanders Elementary School, we even got to publish our own "books." Basically, we scribbled the stories down in our still-in-the-works chicken scratch. Some volunteer mom would type these stories up, leaving the majority of each page blank so that you could grace it not only with your literary opus, but also with your artistic talents. Then, you picked out the fabric that would be on the cover and voila! A few weeks later you had, in your hands, a published hardcover book to bring home and show off.

So then I tried to remember what stories I had written... which is when I realized that my imagination was a bit on the strange side, even at the tender age of 8. Here's the plotline of one of my childhood stories. I remember my teacher actually sat down like, hmm Betsey this isn't really your best work, are you sure you don't focus on a different story? But I published it anyway. What can I say, I was dedicated to my craft.

Basically, it starts out with a woman who, to my recollection, has no name but is in the hospital because she's pregnant. She realizes she has to go to the bathroom, so she makes it there and is doing her business when plop... the baby falls out into the toilet like a turd. I was clearly a bit confused at the time regarding certain parts of the anatomy and their corresponding functions. Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes... I actually employed the word "plop."

She names her beloved newborn bundle-of-joy Diana, and after a few days they go home to embark on their lives as a family. Diana has a happy childhood, it would seem, but then one day she wakes up and her leg hurts. So her mom brings her to the hospital, where they discover she has a broken leg. So they give her a bright pink cast and she's all pumped because people get to sign it and such. Then, you turn the page....

...and the one line reads "The next day, Diana died." (I'm pretty sure this is when my teacher started raising her eyebrows.) So they have a funeral and her mom is a wreck. Then she decides to get four cats. The end.

Who smells a Nobel Prize for Literature in my future?