Do you remember when you first needed to write?

It’s a little sketchy in my brain, but I think I was seven years old when I first did so for pleasure and compulsion. That seems early to me, in that I was probably just learning to write, really — this was 1972, we were more relaxed in education back then. It actually wouldn’t be fair to call it writing in the mechanical sense, I think it would best be described as storytelling, because it was in the form of primitive, two-page comics (the next step in which I present as the Secret History of EL Comics, which date to probably age 8). I don’t remember the specifics of what the comics were about, just that I had a friend involved and that I had resolved to sell them door to door.

I think the business plan all fell apart, largely because we were seven and not as dedicated as we might have been. I have a vague memory of pages that involved dots and lines, and of at least once going to a neighbors door with that friend and trying to sell one to her from a several existing copies.

It’s as an eight year old that I remember my first serious efforts to tell a story — and my obsession with “Lost in Space” as a springboard to my personal creativity. I remember being given one of those thin, blue test books in school and filling it with a series of short stories — I’m talking two-pagers — under the umbrella title “Somewhere in Space.” I don’t remember any other details about the story, and I don’t even recall whether this was in regard to a school assignment or of my own choice.

I do remember also writing stories about a hero named Captain Could. He wasn’t a captain in the sense of Captain Marvel — he was a captain in the military who went off on daring adventures. Alas, I remember no detail about the good Captain’s adventures either, but I do know that he eventually made it to Colonel and was the subject of a couple issues of my later comic-book making when I was eight or nine. It’s important to point out that he was an original creation — and that I’m fairly certain that weaving a childish variation on “Lost in Space” probably got my brain into gear to conceive of Captain Could.

The only other piece of writing I can recall that early was a poem, which was really a baseball-themed variation on “Home on the Range.” It got printed in the mimeographed third grade literary take home collection. I think there was also a recipe one at some point.

Anyhow, even at an early age, I had obviously progressed from amateur to contributor rather quickly. I can tell you one thing — it was something I was actually confident at, something that came naturally, much more so than kickball.

That’s hardly the end of my adaptations of popular culture into my own projects, and I have plenty more I will no doubt talk about at another point, including my opus based around “Lost in Space” that one-upped “Somewhere in Space” in scope if not actual writing. The point is that if you are a writer, I think it comes out at an early age not necessarily through writing, but through the unstoppable urge to tell stories. I was obsessive about that throughout my pre-teen years, telling stories.

And though I’ll probably also have more to say about this at another point, science fiction television was my story catalyst in the way that folklore or Bible tales might have been 100 years before. I think that’s how creative minds work, and it’s central to my views about copyright and fan fiction, which falls in favor of the latter and wishing the former would ease up a bit. Creative storytelling is nurtured in a society through children copying the old stories and growing up to adapt them to new audiences.

And so I had to write “Somewhere In Space.” I had to tell my version of “Lost In Space,” because that’s what human’s have done in various forms for thousands of years. It’s the origin of religion and bad television, and it starts with eager little kids.