A Writer (in Theory).

The problem with choosing any sort of identity for oneself as a child is that it determines what sort of Christmas gifts one will receive for the rest of one's life. When I decided in second grade that unicorns were a pretty cool thing, my dad's faceless horde of friends in Los Angeles and Chicago began sending me unicorn books, toys, trinkets, and clothing. When a couple of years later I began to write the sort of terrible stories that small children write, journals began pouring in from every imaginable source. I did not find these journals at all conducive to literary inspiration, since I was much more wont to writing short fiction pieces about magical whales than recording anything about my daily life. The truth did not seem to me a worthwhile subject for writing, so I began one or two of the journals but never got past a first entry in any of them.

With my discovery of the Internet in eighth grade came a profound desire for self expression. I dove into websites like Xanga expecting that blogging could be the thing to launch my brilliant prose into public view. Of course, an online journal proved to be no more inspirational than the physical ones of my childhood, and after a year of recording what I ate each day, I gave up on the web's blank and yearning templates as well.

I considered  my inability and lack of motivation to document my own thoughts in a compelling way to be one of my greatest failures as a writer. Mollusk Antics has been the first semi-autobiographical project I've properly maintained, and it is more visual than textual.

A couple of things finally inspired me to start up another blog: the satisfaction I get from drawing Mollusk Antics, the realization that thoughts that seem insignificant now might be interesting to me/others later, the feeling of importance and transition that has come over me during the process of choosing a college and preparing to graduate high school, an article I read in the Chronicle this morning about getting discovered as a writer because of an email, and some really questionable lamb chops I ate that might be messing with my head.

The key to success is prolificness, quantity begets quality, et cetera. That is why I created this blog. I will probably discuss some of my comics a little as well, but it is more a method by which I can elaborate on the autobiographical aspects of Mollusk Antics in words.

That is all for now. The internet is a lovely thing and so is spring break.