What writing meant to me

Been figuring out the whole twitter-verse thing and discovered a writing challenge I missed from Thom G (almost a year late is better than never, right?). Here it is: What does writing mean to me?

I feel like I need another ten months to come up with the answer. It's like those questions in a 5-year journal that a friend gave to me -- instead of writing what you did each day, you answer a question -- some kind of innocuous, like "East Coast or West Coast?" and some nearly impossible, like "What is true?" Then you compare how the answer changes over the five years.

My answer to this question has changed over the years too. I'm using 'writing' interchangeably with 'imagination' because so much of writing occurs before you ever pick up a pen.

It started early. For the most part it remained in the background, a tool for playground games, a sand bucket to form imaginary rules and shape scenarios. I played with neighborhood friends long past dusk, inventing wild adventures, protected from real ones. Everything was as it should be.

But as Janet Burroway will tell any fiction writer, Only trouble is interesting.

When I was ten years old we moved -- only an hour and a half away, same state. But it was a different place with a different mindset, and I went from being well-liked to the object of ridicule in a matter of days. Painful pre-teen years are almost a universal experience; more so when bullying is daily and damaging and continues for years.