Is this thing on?

Hi, there. The name’s Ginger. I write stuff some folks read. I’ve been writing stuff for other people to read for a long while, starting way back in the Reagan administration. I learned I had a way with words at the grand ol’ age of eleven.

That awkward lil sweetheart was 1981 Ginger. Wasn’t she cute? She didn’t know it at the time. She was actually having a helluva year. She had just moved to a new town in 1980, where she both met the person who would be a lifelong best friend within weeks of losing her dad. By October 1981, she was on school number two, across town from said bestie, and living with virtual strangers trying to make it work in her weird new existence.

Little did she know, an escape hatch would come in the shape of a Halloween assignment.

That year, Mrs. Adams, the sixth grade English teacher at Alice Landergin Elementary, would pass out a mimeographed copy of a house to each student in the class. The house was quite ordinary, just a two story house in black and white print, waiting for color. Waiting for a story.

By October of 1981, I had never written a thing, at least not on paper. All my stories were told in my playtime, with my Fisher Price Little People and my Barbie dolls (more on that later.) The closest I had come to any written story was when I got a box of colorful markers and decided each one represented a character in the very crude drawings I managed.

An artist, I ain’t.

There was Mr. Blue and Miss Pink and Mr Green and Miss Yellow. They would live in the pictures I drew, and speak in their own ink on pieces of notebook paper. Dialogue only.

It was all very rudimentary. Just a fun way to pass an afternoon while listening to America’s Top 40 or Solid Gold.

Certainly nothing I would turn in to my teacher.

Fun fact about me: I’m a praise junkie. I have been ever since I got my first excellence awards when I graduated kindergarten. And yes, that was awards. Plural. From then on, I was hooked. You can’t go down from excellent. I didn’t just want As, I wanted A+s. So, I was pretty excited when I got passed my copy of that house drawing.

What to draw, what to draw.

What to write.

I wasn’t intimidated by the assignment, even though I’d never done anything like it before. But thanks to my aunt’s Harlequin subscription, and my recovering from the first onset of depression in the wake of my dad’s death, I was a voracious reader. I got lost in stories all the time. Books. TV. Movies. Songs.

I was queen of story-time on the playground, whether we were chased by dinosaurs or looking for a lost, magical amulet (aka the big honking green rhinestone necklace my mom used to own.) Hell, I even interjected myself into TV shows like H.R. Puffnstuff, General Hospital and Dukes of Hazard.

I lived and breathed stories.

How hard could it be to come up with one of my own on demand?

Turns out, pretty damned hard. Did you know that stories, really good ones, go wherever they want, do whatever they want and just drag you along for the ride?

I grabbed my pencil, put it to paper and had every intention of telling a scary ghost story worthy of an A+ Halloween assignment. As soon as the pencil began to move and my brain began to work its weird magic, I found myself telling a completely different tale. Every new paragraph turned out to be another detour from my original idea. The further I got into the story, getting to know the characters, the less scary it got. I set out to write about a haunted house, and ended up telling a story about a childless couple who built a grand house to fill with babies, only to die childless. The house would go on to be an orphanage.

When I colored in the drawing, there wasn’t a cobweb in sight. No black night. No gray sky. Not even a hint of horror.

Still, I was pretty cocky when I turned in the assignment. I was a good student, you may recall, and so I was used to high marks by trusting my instincts and doing what I thought I needed to do to secure that sacred A+. In fact, I was pretty excited to see how I did on this new task. I had fun with it, and I thought it was a pretty good read even if it wasn’t a traditional ghost story.

I’m not ashamed to say I love all my stories. They’re part me, part magic. What’s not to love?

My self-confidence didn’t falter until Mrs. Adams passed the graded assignments back and skipped over me entirely. It was the first time that ever happened in my life. That couldn’t have been a good sign, right?

On wobbly legs, I walked up to her desk to inquire what had happened. Where was my assignment?

She indicated to the board behind her. The one where all the announcements went. Anything that the whole class needed to be aware of. All the news fit to pin.

And there - in a ray of pure sunlight with angels singing from on high - was my cheerful, colorful little house.

Better still - there it was, circled in red ink, that beautiful, beautiful A+.

That following spring, the first poem I ever wrote ended up in the school lobby downstairs, along with being featured in my mother’s company newsletter.

Again, hooked.

An interesting dance party for the sheer bliss of creation is the scary, heart-stopping panic of sharing it with other people, in hopes they might enjoy it, too. Will they feel what I feel? See what I see? Read my pages of fancy, plucked from the clear blue sky, and share the world I’ve created?

A heady thought. Intoxicating. Irresistible, as it turns out.

I’ve been sharing since I was eleven years old. Hundreds of poems, a handful of song lyrics, short stories, a novella when I was fourteen, 10 screenplays and 40 novels, starting with the first one I wrote long-hand while living homeless in my car. Escape hatch, like I said. In 1995, I wrote two books back to back healing from the sudden death of my infant son.

In 2004, I wrote my first blog. It was a weight-loss journey that AOL ended up featuring. My second blog on Myspace gave me a huge audience of new friends from around the world.

What will I write here?

Wish I could tell ya. The pen* goes where it goes. I just follow. You may subscribe to get more content like this, only to find yourself deep in the weeds as I go explore the dark, scary places. Maybe I shed light on the scary stuff and make it seem a little brighter and a little more hopeful. Maybe I’ll just share writer-y type content or talk about how the Golden Buzzer act on AGT made me cry. Movies. Music. TV. Life.

Stories.

It’s all on the table. The picture is still boring, plain, black and white, and I have 53 years worth of colors.

The one thing I do know is that I’m glad you’re here.

I can’t wait to see what we share next.