How I Became a Writer
By: Matthew Leo
Tags: Articles, Writer, Writing, Authors, How To

I look back on my writing history and it amazes me all of the things that steered me into the direction of writing. It almost seems like fate had intervened at many various points in my life to keep my writing going no matter what distracts that may have been thrown at me. Let us start at the beginning shall we?

I remember my first earliest story work. It was in the second grade. I wrote my first short story as an assignment for my teacher and I remember it well. In the story, I wrote how my friend and I were sitting in a McDonald’s, eating cheeseburgers, when some bad guys dressed in all black and ski masks came rappelling through one of the many large windows the restaurant had. I imagined myself as the hero of the story, of course. With some fancy Kung Fu as my weapon and my best friend Gerald as my sidekick, we beat them all up and saved the day in true heroic fashion. Thankfully, my writing has come a long way from where it started. Ahem. Fast forward a couple years. I purchased my first heavy-reading, non-picture book that year. It stood out from all the rest at the book fair. It was entitled “The Black Cauldron.” It was based on the Disney movie of the same title. As I had already seen the movie, I had a real interest in how the words mirrored the content I saw in the film. This book was the first fantasy novel that I had ever gotten my hands on and it really fed my blooming imagination. I gorged on it completely. From that moment on, I was hooked on bringing adventures to life with my own words.

My first visit to my paternal grandparents’ house was the reason that really spurned me to learn how to write well. My Aunt Cyndi, or Aunt Cyn, lived in an attic space room above. It was awesome. The staircase lay hidden in what looked like a broom closet in the kitchen. It seemed like it took forever to climb, and the corridor was not very wide at all. Thankfully, I was not claustrophobic. It lent to the atmosphere though. When you reached the top, a pale white door opened up to a decent sized space. It was about the size of your typical master bedroom. It had one bed caddy-cornered in the center with an expansive pink frilly comforter. To me, getting into this space was the equivalent of discovering Narnia through the wardrobe. All along the walls were various rock posters cock-eyed in helter-skelter fashion. It was the bookcase sitting in an open space near the bed that really caught my attention. It was tall, wide and dusty. There were colorful thick spines all across the shelves. I ran my fingers across them with envy. Even though I had been in the school library before, this was different. I read over the titles: the Destroyer series, various Piers Anthony books, Stephen King, Fred Saberhagen and countless others. I had never heard of these people before. The thickness of the books intrigued me, as I have never even attempted to conquer anything such epic volume before. My Aunt Cyn took my stare of interest as a cue and began pulling books off the shelves to show me their covers. She asked me if I liked reading and I told her about my “The Black Cauldron” book. She told me “these aren’t anything like elementary school library books.” She was right. Just looking at some of the covers, I could see just that. If these books were half as interesting on the inside as they were on the outside . . . I would definitely take a shine to them. These were books written for adults. I guess my Aunt had thought I carried myself kind of like an adult, even back then, so she thought that I was more than ready for them.

Even though I was only seven or eight at the time, she offered me a whole shelf of books from her collection. I remember I had a good-sized paper shopping bag packed full of books. I showed them to my mom and surprisingly she approved and let me keep them. I do not think she realized back then in what I was getting myself.

Therefore, the meat of my writing career really started with reading. You see, this was the siphon that eventually poured those aching words into my waiting fingers. I poured over the books like there was no tomorrow. I studied from the masters. I absorbed all of the dialogue and paid attention to how it flowed from character to character. I calculated how the author described things and watched how much or how little detail he or she went into for the atmosphere and the environment. I formed my own opinions about what worked and what did not work, writing my own rules to the writing game.

In Junior High, they had made up for the award assemblies a contest. It was called “Hooked on Books” if I recall correctly. A student would receive a certificate for how many books they read over the course of the year. They would have prizes for milestones: 20 books, 50 books, 75 books, 100 books, and so on all the way up to 200 books. I do not remember exactly how far I got, but I do remember reaching just past 100 books.

During my 9th grade year, our local electric company hosted their annual “A World Without Electricity Essay Contest”. I beat out all of the others for second place alternate in the contest. The winner won a trip to Disney World, and I won a $100 savings bond. Even still, I was pretty stoked.

The reading did not stop when I reached high school obviously, although my writing style did shift a bit. I had starting writing poetry my 10th grade year and even managed to get a couple of them published in Sparrowgrass Forum and on Poetry.com. By my senior year, I had written over 200 poems and I was quite pleased with that. I had kept the majority of my poems in a small black Star Trek journal, to display my work to whoever was interested. Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse, while during one of my days in Psychology class; one of my jealous, bully classmates stole the book from right off the top of my pile of schoolbooks. I never saw it again.

Cue the violin and the sad “awww”.

I was upset. It was not so much that I had lost any of my work, (I had kept my originals at my house), but that someone felt like they needed to hurt me that way. I stopped writing for months.

My senior year, I became a writer again, only this time it was against my will. My English teacher felt that we needed to do college level work, so he initiated a journal in which we had to write on the many different aspects of our personal lives and how we defined them. The topics ranged from love, death, hope, courage, hate, fear, and a myriad of other hosts we had to entertain. We studied them. We learned how the masters defined them by studying their quotes and reading passages of their great elicit works. My mind was a melting pot of ideas again. It burned with the passion and built to a fever pitch, and my trusty number 2 pencil was my only release. I was a writer again and I relished in it. I starting writing poetry on the side and again and showed my teacher. He was enthralled at my imagination. I was breaking poetry rules left and right and forging new ground. I will never forget the college recommendation that he wrote for me: “Matthew Leo is one most gifted student poets I have ever met . . .”

It was his idea that I re-start the poetry club for our school again, which I did. Unfortunately, we only had two meetings, and one of them was to pose for the picture in the yearbook. I was not a very organized people manager back then so it rather fizzled and fell apart.

I never got a chance to use that recommendation as I could not afford to apply to a four-year college, but I will never forget his words. It was as if he branded me on my soul that I was a writer, now and forever. It was my wordsmith pedigree.

In the end, we compiled all of our journal entries in a larger project: “My Philosophy of Life”. It was an intense and personal look into our own psyches. It was personal, deep, life changing, and entirely mine. I considered it the one true thing that any teacher ever did for me as a student to prepare me for life outside of the classroom. It was enabling in ways that I cannot even begin to describe.

Now, in college I took a creative course or two, and did quite well. However, I found that I learned more from reading regular fantasy novels than from the classes. After I earned my associates degree in Pre-secondary Education/Creative Writing, I found myself unable to afford to push my education further. I concentrated on working in a fast-food restaurant for years, where writing opportunities disappeared like evaporating water in a boiling pot.

One can get lost easily in the humdrum that is work, and I did just that. Before I knew it, four years had passed, and I was married with a child of my own. I discovered that had I missed putting pen to paper and creating wonderfulness out of thin air. I went online and found out that one of my favorite authors, Piers Anthony, had an email address online, and welcomed amateur writer’s questions. I wrote him immediately. He preferred parcel post back then and insisted on writing me a handwritten letter, which I keep safe to this day. I told him where I was in this life, and how I rarely had time to write because of my work schedule. I asked him for his advice. The gist of his advice was this. That even if while I was working, if some idea or notion came to my head, that I was to grab the nearest paper like substance, and write the bones of it down. It did not matter it was on a cheeseburger wrapping paper, write it down and file it away. Ideas are the fruits of your imagination. If you do not write them down, they will spoil, and you may lose them forever. It was wise, sage advice.

I did so, and began writing poetry again. Then the story ideas came and I was back in business.

Humdrum line work can be the blank slate that imagination springs. I once thought that my work was going to be the murderer of my writing persona. Now, I am using it to fuel my inner muse. I started reaching out to other favorite authors. I have spoken to Stephen Brust on several occasions online in a chat room and he was a wealth of ideas and a just a splendid man to talk to and get to know. I also attempted to contact Amanda Hocking, the proverbial poster child for self-publishing, as she seems to know what she is doing and doing it well, but alas she cannot be bothered to making any new friends right now. It is okay. I will not hold a grudge.

Now here are my most recent achievements I am most proud. I have currently self-published my first poetry book at Amazon.com and BandN.com entitled “Death and Other Musings by Matthew Leo” It is a small poetry book, but it was a valuable learning experience for me as I am learning the ropes of self-publishing. I was even invited on BlogTalkRadio’s “Dead Air” channel to be on their radio show and to plug the book. It was an insane blast.

My sister, Melissa Leo-Pahl, and I are are the co-authors of a zombie apocalypse novel entitled “Zombies Don’t Ride Motorcycles.”

If you really enjoyed this article, please give me a few claps using the clapping hands icon right below. Each clap helps keeps me one step away from the zombie hoard chasing behind me. :)

Feel free to subscribe to my articles below. You will get regular emails whenever I savagely type out new content and publish it from my amazing, but old, Macbook Pro!

Also, if you like zombie novels, please check of my 1st novel on Amazon.

Zombies Don’t Ride Motorcycles← Link.

#zombie #apocalypse #dystopian #horror

© 2020 Matthew Leo