The Maiden Voyage

When I first started writing, I didn’t want to have a blog.  

I didn’t know if I could find new and interesting things to write about, and share with my readers. I made a point just then, to myself without realizing it, though. The phrase “My Readers.” I wouldn’t be an author or a writer without readers and followers. I would be, but in a weird way. I didn't want a journal. I want to write for myself, because I love writing, but it is truly my readers who will make or break me as an author. 

Please make me. 

I used to write. When I was in junior high was the first time I can remember writing a story. And I loved it. My friend and I started writing a book together. I honestly can’t remember what it was even about, but I remember the opening line like it was yesterday. 

Vroom! A missile whizzed down the tunnel just missing their heads. 

I know what you are thinking. I used the word “vroom” and actually spelled it out. Cut me some slack, I was in junior high. Looking back on it, it almost reminds me of the old Batman TV show were the words like "POW" and "WHAM" would show up on the screen as they fought the bad guys. I know that the reason I did this was because I wanted to hook my readers. Right there at the beginning. I wanted them to be like, “Whoa. This got intense fast.” 

I was new to writing, but I knew that it was the effect that I was going for. 

I can’t tell you what happened to that story, but it was supposed to be something of a war story. One of my all-time favorite books is For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. I suppose I was inspired by his take on the Spanish Civil War. 

I remember discussing this book with my high school English teacher. I was convinced that Halle Berry would play an amazing Maria, if it would ever make it into a current movie.   

It was something about the way that Hemingway wrote that just captured me. I can be easily distracted and sometimes I find reading a book difficult if it is not absolutely captivating. You may ask yourself, how is The Old Man and the Sea captivating? 

Honestly? I have no idea. But I loved it. 

I would read stories such as C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters or Edgar Allen Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum and not fully grasp the importance of what I was reading, or the impact these authors had in their genre. 

And how can you not read the Harry Potter series and not be enchanted and moved by such an imaginative world? Or even journey across Middle Earth with Tolkien and not splendor at the lore and history he created? 

I know I want to be captivating. 

Maybe that is why I chose to start writing again. I want to be imaginative and exciting. I want to tell a story. I want to create a world, and amaze a generation. I want to leave a piece of me here when I am gone. 

But most of all I want to be captivating. 

Stephan J. Hahn