As my part-time writing career continues, curious people occasionally ask me how I started writing or perhaps why I started writing. And of course, I never gave it much thought as to what triggered the origins of this bug, or itch to put words down on paper.

I just started writing. Then I wrote some more. Went to writing conferences, and met a lot of people who were better than I was, and I practiced the craft of writing with dialogue, tension, plot, conflict, sentence structure and the like, all the while trying to save lives in my medical practice.  Some people insist on telling me it must be a stress release of some type for me, allowing me to release some of the heaviness I have carried in my life from certain events.  Maybe they are right, maybe not.  Or maybe they just want to figure it out themselves, and that reason makes the most sense to them because I have certainly not become world famous from my efforts. (yet).

But I guess like Forest Gump who just started running, and then he ran and ran, I started writing and then I wrote and wrote.  During rare free time, lonely times, sitting at bars, writing on white napkins when thoughts invaded my brain, during long airplane flights rather than watching movies, church pews during sermons, vacations on the beach, or when waiting for patients to arrive late at night in the hospital when on call.  In fact, on my last plane trip to visit my father, I wrote several chapters, just sitting at the airport gate, waiting to take off, while I noticed everyone else was staring at their trusty cell phones —playing games, sending emails, or watching videos or whatever. Yes, everyone else.  But then, I started to think about it, and realized finally, after all these years there was a trigger that was hidden way back in the cob-webs of my remote memory.

Bob started it.

I think I was six years old and was either in the middle of first grade or ending it or who the hell knows. But I do remember going down stairs to our basement where there was an old table and chair, and I got my hands on a bound notebook and in my best cursive writing, that I just learned a few months prior, I wrote a story.  I forgot about baseball or running around the neighborhood chasing friends or catching crayfish in the creek, or playing on top of school roofs, and sat down and wrote a story.

The title I remember, was Bob the Whale

I am sure that is it.  I don’t remember the details and I am sure it was not well-written, and punctuation and grammar were probably less than optimal or more likely, non-existent, but I do remember Bob.  Bob was a baby whale and something traumatic happened to little Bob the whale.  I think some bigger whales ate his parents or maybe he was attacked, so he was a little lonely, but he learned how to survive and make friends or something like that. That’s about all I remember about this, my first story I wrote, except that I wrote very large in blue ink.  Bob was a blue whale. Sounds kind of Hemingwayish.

Then, when my grandparents were visiting, my parents told them “Carson wrote a story.  We found it on a table downstairs.”  So, they asked me to bring it up and read it to my grandparents.  I remember being a little embarrassed at first, and then, a feeling of pride warmed my chest because they all complimented on my story about Bob the Whale, and that they were surprised that I was able to do this so young, having just learned to read and write that year.

The point is I believe, my parents early on, encouraged me with my talent and made me believe in myself, at least in this endeavor, and although I left writing for quite a few years, eventually, as I became older and took courses in college, the building blocks continued to accumulate and then, suddenly in 2011 or so, I naively decided I needed to write my first novel. But then, I believe, without the encouragement of my parents at age six or seven, it is unlikely I would have believed that I had any talent.

The rest is history and I continue to write.  I am not sure I do it for stress release as many suggest, but when I feel an idea in my soul, or a topic that needs to be discussed, I cannot let that thought extinguish without writing it down.  But now, with the feedback I receive from people, it seems I have been blessed with the ability to touch some people in a positive way with my words, or at least let their minds imagine in ways they never thought.  Some say they laugh, some cry, some just think about things they never thought of.

And, the other continuing stimulus my readers already understand:  Ollie has requested that I write his life story, so I cannot quit.  Nobody says no to Ollie.

But in the end, I have to blame it on Bob the whale.

© 2023 SRCarson Publications