Why I do this...

"It'll be a great exercise," I told myself when I first started this. "If I'm at the computer, it'll get me writing productively again, instead of wasting my time in chat rooms or playing computer games. It'll get me used to making and keeping deadlines on a regular basis and doing what I've always wanted to do, which is to write."

It's a lot harder than I thought it would be.

Funny, isn't it? We always want to do that which is the most difficult or challenging for us to do. On entrance tests, my math scores were always higher than my language scores, and yet I studied to be a writer. While it took me only 30 minutes to design the general layout of this site, it's taken me three days just to outline this written piece in my mind. And still I want to write.

I must be crazy to even try...

But let me explain why I write. It began with a piece of artwork I did in class. I was four years old at the time, and as usual, my little masterpiece was a scene out of a movie I created in my head. When I went up to the teacher's desk to take my turn at sharing my work, I told the story of the characters I drew: a family of four diamond-headed robots on their way home to have dinner.

It was an elaborate tale, far more involved than I can now remember, and when I finished, the teacher beamed at me, stood up, and held my drawing up for the rest of the class to see.

"I like April's drawings best," she said, "because they always tell a story."

Her words were probably simply meant to give a child a boost of self-esteem. Nevertheless, the event remains a part of my memory, and since then, I've always considered myself a storyteller at heart.

And what means of communication do storytellers have?

Words.

Spoken. Written. Implied. Storytellers use language as their tool. They shape it, manipulate it, and they sometimes abuse it. Forget what anyone else tells you. Storytelling is all about the mastery of language.

For me, because of my unrooted background, it isn't easy. It's an ongoing process and a never-ending challenge -- the longest, hardest hurdle in my growth, the toughest skill to master. Every now and then, I get what my boyfriend calls "native". I ramble, get off subject, meandering in the way he says that islanders do. I mispronounce words I've only read and never heard. I stumble on malapropisms, both humorous and disastrous. I go blank -- knowing what I want to say, but not how to say it. He says it's like I think in one language, translate the words in my mind to English, and then speak.

I guess you could say it's like a computer translating the phrase "out of sight, out of mind" from English, to Russian, and back to English, eventually coming up with "invisible maniac."

And that's why I'm here.

I'm here to develop a craft, to get comfortable in the language. I'm here to hone my style, my voice, my ability to shape and organize words, language, and main story points. And mostly, I'm here to keep myself from telling people that I'm out of sight, out of mind, when I'm really and truly an invisible maniac.

[beat]

Or something like that.