Growing Up as a Writer

Growing Up as a Writer ©

By

Michael Casey

As usual I didn’t have an idea to talk about, then I was talking to my daughter, as all dad’s should, and she said my material, my writer was for a higher age certificate as the years had progressed. And this is true, I cannot talk about kittens all the time, and no I don’t now talk about sex kittens, though Trump does seem to be the expert. I hope all my material is still no more than 12 certificate or PG, you never need to be explicit when a metaphor will do, or a pantomime phrase.

Coroline is very good as is the Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman if I’ve spelt his name right, but that is not all he writes. The same goes with me, I follow where the muse takes me to amuse you all, and myself. I could never write to order, it would kill my spirit and my muse, and my Muse is not some naked woman a la Picasso. I just pick an idea from space and then away I go. I am an Astronaut floating through ideas in the spaces in my brain. I hope my Russian readers enjoyed the story about the Spaceman and the Archangel which was on my site a while back and may still be live on one of my sites, I have 6 altogether I think.I never know what I write till it hits the page with the first wave and then the tide of words soaks up the page or all over your screen.

I am no Canute either controlling the words and commanding them to obey me, I set the words free and hope you all enjoy them. I did of course mispronounce Canute when I was in Mr Reading’s History lesson back in 1970, my friend Big D PhD and yes he really is a PhD still reminds me of this. He also reminds me that I stopped his heart by a friendly punch the same year. But now he is a PhD and I am a penniless writer, even though I’ve reached 1.27 million words now.

So just as I’ve grown up, or sideways as Big D PhD will attest, so our likes and dislikes and tastes grow too. So I’ve had the dad experience and I’ve written a lot about it in my first few books, which should make you all laugh a lot, try 300 and Not OUT for examples. You can only write so much about this subject or that subject then you move on.

Though I do have themes. Such as the “weak” guy winning  the girl, because some girls are not just vacuous reality tv wannabes, a real man has character not just muscles or a flash car and no personality. How I ended up with a Shanghai model looking wife you’ll have to ask Almighty God himself, though nobody believes me when I said she made me laugh. Having a good brain did help too, but again nobody believes that either. However my Chinese family in Shanghai know me, I was even called 1 in 1,000,000 and no they were not all drunk. Or then again it could be that I’m cursed, you decide.

And on it goes, Life, Love and Passion and Arguing all measure for measure that ends in pleasure. Family life has all these things and I bring them to the page in a variety of ways. Its not a crime to display this or that and let you all imagine the other. I was thinking should I write a horror piece, though some of you might already be saying my writing is horrible. I did write Michael and the Chink in the Wall a while ago and I did get a lot of good reactions to that, so I never know which way I will go.

My writing is an amusement arcade, some words go up and down, others go from side to side, others over the top, and no this is not a metaphor of some kind, its all in your mind. I put words to page and when I reread from start to finish I’m always pleased that the piece is better than envisaged. I might think I’m riding on a bus, as Foster wrote in a clever piece about Life and Religion in the school magazine 44 years ago, see I remember everything. But when I finish the piece and read it back I discover I’ve been riding in a chauffeur driven car and the words have taken me further than I thought and I’ve landed in a far far better place.

So I hope the journey for all my readers all over the place in 26 plus different countries is enjoyable. I also hope that though I really am the fat silver haired writer in shades from Birmingham that I am Ukrainian or Polish or Russian or French or Belgium or whatever nationality you are. Even English or American or a stray Canadian. Because I a Fool you can all relate too, and hopefully forgive, because I am one of you, though you may just say he’s from next door, wherever next door is.

I have to go now as Lech, Boris and Gregorgi want to bury me at night in the woods, just to see if their hounds can track me down. Otherwise they would have to blindfold their dogs, no they wouldn’t do that, they love their dogs so much. They may just blindfold me instead. This is my cartoon writing, if you are a cartoonist why not do some drawings then together we could be published in someplace far far away. Maybe I’ll get published in the Antarctic Times with cartoons by Uri from Russia, stranger things have happened, so bye for now I have to put my blindfold on, we are reenacting 50 Shades…