my life as a famous writer by jonny
	I like to think of myself as a kind of writer. I keep a journal, and I occasionally write little stories or scenes from unwritten plays. Troy encourages me to do this as much as possible, because he thinks I am a real writer and the only thing wrong is that I don’t do it enough. My mom loves everything I do. My dad thinks writing is where my real talent lies. Of course this offends me because I’ve been trying to be an actor almost as long as my dad’s known me. Anyway, when I was a kid I was a famous writer in my house. My parents gave me a little blue typewriter that was very old and clunky and I would stay up late typing novels. In one of them I even manually justified the margins, counting up the letters in the words for each line so that it would fit perfectly. You can imagine how this affected the quality of my writing. And I didn’t bother with white out. If I made a mistake, I just typed over it or x’ed out the wrong letters, which makes for a pretty page. While my parents were very supportive of this habit (and some good examples are coming up), they also enjoyed sleeping, so I was yelled at a lot for typing late at night. It was a real conflict for me, the little writer person, when they expected me to stop my creative flow like that. I had to wonder, did they want me to be a serious writer or not? It was a lot of stress for a ten year old. I was a fast writer, too, whipping up novels left and right. As an adult I’ve realized that I am not a perfectionist (but I’m married to one), and as I look back at my career as a writer I realize that I wasn’t one then either. But being a writer was a big part of my identity as a child. I was the writer in my family. The famous writer. I still have these novels. They’re very bad. I’m going to quote a few of them soon and will get no arguments from you. Speaking of you, who are you? Why are you reading this? You’re sweet. Here come some examples of my parents’ support. Besides their perfect margins, the best part of my novels was that I had my own in-house illustrator. My dad, being an artist, would have little meetings with me at the kitchen table where I would tell him the basic plot and on which page I needed a drawing. I probably said something like this: “Here is where Erica has to babysit her sister and she’s really mad about it. So draw Erica and her mother fighting. And her mother should look very tired and overworked, because she is. And so is Erica.” This was from my best seller “In Charge of It All.” It referred to the fact that Erica, the oldest daughter of a single, hardworking, alcoholic mother, has to be, well, in charge of it all. I wrote about some pretty serious themes, all completely absent from my little life. So my dad, who took this very seriously, would nod, maybe take some notes and then get right to work. It was practically instant gratification. Of course, I had to give him the actual novel to draw on, because we weren’t fancy and didn’t have a printing press in the house. Every novel of my childhood says, “- Janelle L. Hottman” and “Illustrated by Bill Hottman,” followed by “Author of …” and then whatever my previous novel had been called. That’s what famous writers do. (By the way, this is the same man who also took seriously my Popeye the Sailorman T-shirt. We often wrestled on the living room floor, and when things got tough I would run to my bedroom, put on my little shirt and come running out singing the Popeye theme song as I attacked him. The shirt made me extra strong.) My parents also arranged to have a real live poet give me private writing lessons at the high school where my dad taught when I was still in junior high. This meant that someone picked me up from school, drove me to the high school in the middle of the day and left me with this amazing writer who had long blond hair and smiled all the time and smelled good and was very positive about my future. I can’t really remember what the lessons were like, but I guess she gave me writing assignments and then we discussed them. I was on my way to something big. Lastly, my dad gave some of my writing samples to an English teacher at the high school for some more professional feedback. When this man became my English teacher a few years later I prayed he wouldn’t bring this up. He never did. No wonder my dad is a little frustrated that I decided to go into acting. My mom thought everything I did was wonderful and perfect. Come to think of it, she’s probably the reason I’m not a perfectionist. She loved my novels, she loved my short stories, she loved my letters to my grandparents, she loved every play I ever did, and today she loves everything I say and email and think and do. I am, in a word, perfect to her. Here are samples from three different novels, just to give you a little taste: “After a while I got up and started with the hot dogs. Maybe they would add something into my dull life.” (In Charge of it All) “That night I slept good, which was good.” (Taking Dad’s Place) “I dodged onto my pillow and cried my hearts content.” (My Little Brother) Good stuff, huh? So, I shall make my dad happy as I pursue my real talent and continue making my mom happy, which is very easy to do, and write little things now and then for our website. Illustrated by Troy Schremmer. april 2004