gregarious self-possessed and mendacious.
So, like. My parents are perpetually upset that, regardless any of my more achievable career goals and whatnots, I'm still insistent that no really, I'm a writer first and foremost, and I'm going to get my stories and books published someday, and maybe I will even have a fandom of my own at some point and then I'll be really good to them and friendly but still something of a troll and I won't tell my underage fans where Severin Moreau's name came from because it came from Venus In Furs and I don't want to get in trouble for hooking thirteen year olds up with fucking Venus In Furs.
Like, the thing that they keep coming back to is generally something like, "why are you a writer though, why is this a thing that you care about so much, why can't you be more normal, where did we go wrong with you" (which they really don't want me to answer because I could go on for at least an hour and a half about all of the places where they "went wrong" with me but that's beside the point). and I'm just really perpetually confused as to why they keep acting like this is some kind of new development for me? or why they seem to think that it's ever going to go away when it's been a thing that I'm adamantly in love with and that's been necessary to maintaining my mental health since I was a kid and I mean, like, a really young kid too?
Like… so, a story to help explain the thing: every Monday morning in first grade, we had a little bb writing assignment thing where our teacher told us, "tell a story about your weekend." Now, most of my weekends were really really boring and they tended to go like this: I read books, I watched cartoons, my mother was either completely absent or possibly kind of awful, my sister and I got in a fight or ten, I read more books, and I argued with my parents about bedtime because I wanted to read more books instead of sleeping. And I didn't think that it was particularly fair to waste my teacher's time with stories like that because they were boring and I wouldn't want to read boring things so I assumed that Ms. So and So wouldn't want to read boring things and she'd only told us to tell a story…
So, I just blatantly made crap up. And, like, I got away with it for several weeks because all of my stories were well within the realm of possibility. I didn't say anything totally outlandish like, "I met a magical talking dragon named Fitzwilliam who took me on adventure to Fairy Land and we fought an evil wizard and saved a princess and then the queen gave me the highest honors and a public ceremony honoring me." They were things like, "my mom, my dad, my sister, and I went to Cedar Point and I rode on a really cool roller-coaster and I had to put napkins in my shoes to be tall enough to get on it" (which actually did happen, just not at that particular weekend) and, "we went to Disney World and it was fun and I loved Space Mountain best of all" (which was also technically true but it also hadn't happened at that particular weekend), and it eventually culminated in, "we went on a road trip to Albany, NY for my dad's great aunt's funeral and I met RL Stine, author of the Goosebumps books, and it was great except for the funeral part."
And I got away with this until parent-teacher conferences happened, which was when my teacher had gotten suspicious of all of the random adventures I was apparently having and she asked my dad if he actually had family in Albany (which he did and does, but I didn't actually know that). So, he was confused about why she was asking in the first place and she was like, "so has Kassie ever met them" and he was like, "well no, I haven't even seen them since before she was born"… and that's when what I'd been doing on these assignments came out and my teacher was like, "so it seems that your child might be a compulsive liar or something because I'm guessing that none of these stories actually happened right" and well, yeah, none of them had actually happened at the times I said they did, and a few of them were blatantly imagined up, and my parents were really worried about it because maybe I was like a compulsive liar or something and what the Hell could they do about it.
But… I didn't really consider it lying, as such? Like. Ms. So and So had just told us to tell a story about our weekends, the assignment was just, "tell a story"; she didn't once specify that they had to be TRUE stories, just that they had to be STORIES. …and that's when my parents and Ms. So and So realized that I really needed to have these things clearly specified to me and that storytelling is a thing I like to do and… yeah.
Like…. my point here is that the writing thing isn't even remotely new for me and my parents have had to put up with it since I was like five years old so I really don't know where they get off complaining about it being a thing that's important to me like I just woke up this morning and went, "I think I'll be a novelist today."
Like, the thing that they keep coming back to is generally something like, "why are you a writer though, why is this a thing that you care about so much, why can't you be more normal, where did we go wrong with you" (which they really don't want me to answer because I could go on for at least an hour and a half about all of the places where they "went wrong" with me but that's beside the point). and I'm just really perpetually confused as to why they keep acting like this is some kind of new development for me? or why they seem to think that it's ever going to go away when it's been a thing that I'm adamantly in love with and that's been necessary to maintaining my mental health since I was a kid and I mean, like, a really young kid too?
Like… so, a story to help explain the thing: every Monday morning in first grade, we had a little bb writing assignment thing where our teacher told us, "tell a story about your weekend." Now, most of my weekends were really really boring and they tended to go like this: I read books, I watched cartoons, my mother was either completely absent or possibly kind of awful, my sister and I got in a fight or ten, I read more books, and I argued with my parents about bedtime because I wanted to read more books instead of sleeping. And I didn't think that it was particularly fair to waste my teacher's time with stories like that because they were boring and I wouldn't want to read boring things so I assumed that Ms. So and So wouldn't want to read boring things and she'd only told us to tell a story…
So, I just blatantly made crap up. And, like, I got away with it for several weeks because all of my stories were well within the realm of possibility. I didn't say anything totally outlandish like, "I met a magical talking dragon named Fitzwilliam who took me on adventure to Fairy Land and we fought an evil wizard and saved a princess and then the queen gave me the highest honors and a public ceremony honoring me." They were things like, "my mom, my dad, my sister, and I went to Cedar Point and I rode on a really cool roller-coaster and I had to put napkins in my shoes to be tall enough to get on it" (which actually did happen, just not at that particular weekend) and, "we went to Disney World and it was fun and I loved Space Mountain best of all" (which was also technically true but it also hadn't happened at that particular weekend), and it eventually culminated in, "we went on a road trip to Albany, NY for my dad's great aunt's funeral and I met RL Stine, author of the Goosebumps books, and it was great except for the funeral part."
And I got away with this until parent-teacher conferences happened, which was when my teacher had gotten suspicious of all of the random adventures I was apparently having and she asked my dad if he actually had family in Albany (which he did and does, but I didn't actually know that). So, he was confused about why she was asking in the first place and she was like, "so has Kassie ever met them" and he was like, "well no, I haven't even seen them since before she was born"… and that's when what I'd been doing on these assignments came out and my teacher was like, "so it seems that your child might be a compulsive liar or something because I'm guessing that none of these stories actually happened right" and well, yeah, none of them had actually happened at the times I said they did, and a few of them were blatantly imagined up, and my parents were really worried about it because maybe I was like a compulsive liar or something and what the Hell could they do about it.
But… I didn't really consider it lying, as such? Like. Ms. So and So had just told us to tell a story about our weekends, the assignment was just, "tell a story"; she didn't once specify that they had to be TRUE stories, just that they had to be STORIES. …and that's when my parents and Ms. So and So realized that I really needed to have these things clearly specified to me and that storytelling is a thing I like to do and… yeah.
Like…. my point here is that the writing thing isn't even remotely new for me and my parents have had to put up with it since I was like five years old so I really don't know where they get off complaining about it being a thing that's important to me like I just woke up this morning and went, "I think I'll be a novelist today."