Good question. For me, it seems to be the other half of reading, which I also did as soon as I was able. In fact, my earliest story is still in my possession, a 1-pager miraculously preserved along with masses of school reports and other memorabilia. I was 7 years old (51 years ago!), and won a prize in a writing contest for that age in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, where our family lived for 7 years.
I have memories of my father reading to my sister and me before bed. One book which stands out is The Lone Patrol, by John Finnemore, although I remember nothing at all of its contents. But I have the copy owned by his sister, my aunt, which passed to me after her death, and is possibly the very same one which he read to us. I will soon start re-reading it and see if anything comes back.
No less prolific and successful an author than Stephen King (love him or not) wrote in “On Writing” that only two things are necessary to become a writer: read, and write. Don’t wait. Just do it. Start anytime, then learn the rules, either by study or by observation. I seem to have followed this advice my whole life since that precocious young age of 7. Voraciously reading, copiously writing.
Keeping notes of story ideas. (Reason why human-alien contact led to their mutually assured destruction in war: the spouses of both ambassadors at First Contact somehow chose the exact same fabric for their outfits, and killed each other on sight. This top secret information is discovered by the last surviving soldier of one of the sides, probably the alien, not the human. Title: Fashionably Late).
Writing diaries, especially when I was in a new location, which my father’s engineering job, building power stations, assured was frequently. Continuing this when I left home, especially in St Petersburg, Russia (1992-7) and Georgia (1999 to present).
Writing a handful of newspaper articles for my local newspaper in Stony Plain, Canada, when I began traveling solo in 1989. Then, starting with Georgia Today in March 2011, 15th anniversary coming up. Simply by writing the paper an email from Mestia offering regular work from Mestia, Svaneti. Weekly ever since.
Reading, always reading. Science fiction, fantasy, history, science, recreational mathematics, biography. Almost anything, if it’s well written. In this way, taking in the language I would then give back in my own words. Even, as a child, absorbing information by reading the family’s many-volume encyclopedia…
Self-aware enough to be able to analyze my habits and inner world. I am an introvert, but not purely.
Noting which few authors have achieved the feat of being both good and best-selling. For me, John Le Carré tops this list. CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, Stephen R Donaldson, Frank Herbert, Greg Bear, Greg Egan, Mary Doria Russell, CJ Cherryh. The old classics, too, rightly named. John Grisham to me isn’t literature of a high class, but still entertaining as anything, enough so that I’ll read everything he, too, writes.
Even collecting comics, as a teenager, joining the X-men with issue 104 and continuing to 150 until I started traveling and online comics weren’t yet a thing. Picking this medium up again recently, partly for nostalgia, partly to see if middle-aged me feels the same about it as my teenage self (not, but that’s OK).
The frustration of catching up with a living author, and then having to wait for his or her next work. Anticipation when it comes out. Sadness when they die, for all the usual reasons PLUS knowing that’s the end.
Fury when others take up the universe of another author and spoil it completely with much worse writing and veering wildly off canon. Dune post-Herbert, I’m looking at you. So disappointing: you want more, but realize very early on that it just won’t satisfy at all, and abandon it with prejudice. They’re laughing all the way to the bank, unstoppable, and I mourn.
Finally, joining my two main creative worlds of words and images in my fantastical short stories set in Svaneti, all based on and illustrated by my own photos, and first serialized right here in this newspaper.
Neither medium is complete without the other, for me; they enrich each other. There are few things more satisfying to me, creatively.
This is me, the reader and writer. What about you?
Blog by Tony Hanmer
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
