The Joy of Writing
by Joi Maria
I was "writing" stories long before I learned the alphabet, long before I understood how letters become words, and how those words become stories. In nursery school, while everyone else stacked blocks, I stacked sheets of paper. I would fold these papers in half, scribble on the pages, and call them books. I
would "read" my "books" to any and everyone with the patience to indulge me. To my recollection, dolls were a frequent audience.
But first, the ABCs.
I wrote my first "real" story, The Adventures of Space Puppy and Galactic Kitty, when I was in the second grade. That was also the year I learned to draw cartoon dogs and cats, so Space Puppy had the added bonus of illustrations.
In the fifth grade, I wrote a short story called The Earth That Never Was, about astronauts attempting to colonize a utopian planet. All I remember is that the planet and everything about it started with a Z. The names of the aliens, the food they ate, the fauna and flora, all of it began with the letter Z. At the end, nay zed, the astronauts realized they couldn’t dump all their human garbage on this new planet and destroy it the way they’d done Earth, so they got back on their spaceship and zipped self-righteously away to certain death.
Yes. I was a heavy child.
The Man, written during the summer after my eighth grade year, was my first horror story. It was the old babysitter-home-alone trope. Not entirely original, but my grandmother was impressed.
I have always loved telling stories.
When there was an assignment in school, I found a way to turn it into a story. Math class? I would imagine the numbers as characters in a book; 3 was a large, overbearing woman, 1, her reed-thin, ever-compliant husband. Gym? How about instead of actually playing volleyball, I write a paper about the history of volleyball? Science? Have you heard about this new planet they discovered next to Neptune? It starts with a Z.
I was that student. The one who struggled for a C in math (okay, a D), but pulled A’s on anything that had to do with reading and writing. The one the teacher asked to read her stories to the class. For a shy, self-conscious child, the experience of reading to a roomful of my peers was terrifying. But I soon came to love, and even crave, the approval of my teachers, the looks of wonder on the faces of my peers. That feeling I got when I read to the class—when I read my words to the class—was indescribable at the time. But now I know what it was. Joy. Pure. Joy.
Joy was being able to create a world, and to populate that world with people and dialogue, action and scene, using only the words I’d strung together out of my head. Joy was also having people read or hear my stories. And if they liked them? Joy, joy, joy! I knew I wanted to write stories when I grew up.
I started undergrad at Sam Houston State University in 1994, majoring in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing. I continued to receive praise for my short fiction, and even won an award for one of my short stories, Blue Eyeshadow. I also wrote personal essays and critical papers, and a piece or two for the campus paper. I presented at conferences. But fiction remained my joy, and I was buoyed by the belief that I would become the next Toni Morrison, or even better, a Toni Morrison-Octavia Butler-Margaret Atwood-Joyce Carol Oates-Shirley Jackson hybrid. In graduate school, I interned for both the Student Activities Department and The Texas Review Press. When I wasn’t planning a homecoming parade or a student awards banquet, I was pouring over manuscripts or stuffing SASEs.
And I was writing. I wrote everyday. I sent stories to journals. I collected rejections. I kept writing. The only thing I wanted was to fulfill my childhood dream of becoming a writer. A published writer. An author.
Then, during my last semester of grad school, the depression and anxiety that had been playing catch and release with me since adolescence returned and held fast. I was distraught. Most days, I was hard-pressed to think of one good reason to get out of bed, get dressed, or leave the house. Concentrating on my jobs and school required Herculean effort. But perhaps the worst part was the illness left me so hollowed out that even when I could find the will and energy to write, I found no joy in doing so, nor any merit in whatever I did manage to write. Feeling like a real-life embodiment of The Mad Writer, I furiously ripped up my handwritten, rambling drafts and deleted unfinished work from my computer. Desperate to heal and reinvent myself, I quit my jobs, took a leave from grad school, and moved to Houston.
I figured I had two skills that could pay the bills: writing and event planning. In 2001, I applied for a technical writing job at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. I was grossly under-qualified for that position, but they offered me an interview for an administrative position I could perform in my sleep. I interviewed and the job was mine. Within months, I was promoted to head of the department. What followed was a near decade-long career in non-profit volunteer management. Before long, I was convinced I’d found my true calling. What wasn’t there to love? I was a creative-type in a creative environment. I worked with a diverse cross-section of the community, all of them just as enthused as I was to be a part of one of the largest art museums in the country. I got to travel. My job stimulated my creativity, unsheathing skills I didn’t even know I possessed. I discovered I had a flair for graphic design and even started a side gig doing bespoke cards and invitations. My writing background came in handy as I penned copy for my department in the organizational publications. But I was too busy planning events, coordinating philanthropic efforts, and managing the day-to-day operations of my department to write short stories.
It gnawed at me every day that I wasn’t writing. For years, it gnawed at me. But I told myself this was my job now. There were too many late nights, too many meetings, too many events, too many trips for me to find the time to write. Eventually, I stopped thinking of myself as a writer. I immersed myself in the art world. I discovered Kees van Dongen, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Kara Walker, James Turrell, Kermit Oliver, and many, many artists besides, but I lost touch with the one “artist” who should have mattered most. I lost myself.
I didn’t write a story for eight years.
In 2009, I realized I no longer found my career fulfilling. I still loved the people and the energy of the museum, but my job had become too routine. I was uninspired and unmotivated because I had done all there was to do a dozen times over. Since I was already the director of my department, the opportunity for promotion was nil, and I did not want to pursue a lateral move into another area within the organization. I needed a change. And that change needed to be something that filled me with the passion I felt I’d lost, something that brought me joy.
I needed to start writing again.
With the support of my husband, I quit my job. I’d worked non-stop since entering the workforce at age 15—sometimes holding down two or three jobs at time—so no one had to tell me to enjoy being unemployed. I embraced the role of housewife. I took time to travel, volunteer, and yes, to just sit on the couch munching bonbons and watching Little House on the Prairie at 1:00 in the afternoon.
It took me awhile to rediscover the joy of writing. To rediscover the JOI of writing. In 2010, I published a personal essay in the anthology, Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society. A year later, I co-founded Write Inside the Loop, a group for Houston-area fiction writers. More recently, I’ve started submitting my short fiction (and collecting my rejections) to contests and journals, and I’ve returned to writing the speculative fiction stories that so transfixed me in my youth.
I created this website to tell my stories, both real and imagined. In some ways, I am who I said I would be when I grew up. I am a writer. In other ways, I am still just that young girl who wants to be a writer. A young girl with trembling legs, standing before a roomful of people waiting to hear her story.
And so, I’ll begin...