Sean Platt - Writer Dad

WRITER DAD

by Sean Platt

Copyright 2013 by Sean Platt. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited. The author greatly appreciates you taking the time to read his work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends about it, to help me spread the word.

Thank you for supporting my work.

To Cindy, Haley and Ethan, for always being willing to dream, and set out on new adventures.

All we have is because of all we do.

Foreword

I HAD TO WRITE THIS book.

It wasnt fun, and I spent most of the time writing it while wishing for another project. Yet Im extraordinarily grateful that I finally finished it.

This title took me five years.

Thats (no exaggeration) about fifty times longer than I usually spend on any book.

I write fiction until my fingers twitch. Most days, its either easy or fun, and on the best of days its both. But thats me making stuff up. Telling the truth is harder, and memories are always heavier than fantasy. Like muscle to fat.

With so many fun things to write all the time, spending time on this felt like work. But Im glad Im through with it. I owe it to Cindy, Ethan, and Haley to tell this story.

Once it was written, I wrestled with whether it should be published. To write it is one thing; to ask others to read it is something else entirely.

But I wrote it for me, my family, and you.

I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for reading!

Sean

An Unlikely Life, Not So Unlikely

I WAKE UP EACH MORNING still slightly shocked.

Though not quite numb with disbelief, I am still five years into this life swimming in the improbability of it all. Some mornings, with no rhyme or reason or way to know they are coming or mark them on a calendar, I see reasons that this life wasnt so unlikely at all.

My alarm buzzes to a soft drumbeat at 5, except for those mornings when Im blinking before it. Awake, I turn to Cindy, my wife for twelve well-lived years and partner for four more, slip my arms beneath her still-sleeping body, pull her toward me, kiss her softly on the cheek not so hard as to rouse her, but enough to draw a languid I love you-like breath through her lips then slip from bed, still wrestling fog that thickens my thought in those first few minutes of a day. I grab my laptop and amble from bedroom to kitchen where I squeeze the days first cup of coffee from our Keurig (and yes, I know those capsules are wasteful).

Some days, I lose time in my email, read the news, or in some other way fritter the minutes of earliest morning. Most days, I get immediately to work: telling wonderful lies for people eager to read them fibs and fictions designed to make readers feel or think or wonder. This is all Ive ever wanted to do, though I was blind to this truth until all the stuff that makes this story fun to read first started to happen.

Five years into this newest version of my life, I love that Im still astonished to find myself a writer. Time has passed, so Im used to it, but the giddy surprise of most days has dimmed little if any at all. The sheen is there, often fueled by the absurd reality that as with any well-told story the DNA for this particular ending was there from the start.

I should have seen it coming but didnt. Maybe because I was too absentminded to look, or because Im a monkey distracted, endlessly content to swing from branch to branch, two trees at a time, chasing shiny as much as impossible. It might have been because I wasnt supposed to see what was coming. The best endings are often surprising.

Once upon a time, in the barely remembered days of my earliest childhood I wrote silly stories for myself and a small audience: Mom, Pop, maybe my sister, a few of my friends, and all of my teachers. This period of unbridled (though Im sure ridiculous) creativity was followed by two and a half decades of nothing between the last time I wrote for the gee whiz fun of it and when I finally went back to the pen, picking it up because it seemed like something fun to do.

It would be another five after that before the inner kid was totally back, and I produced something as wonderfully absurd as Unicorn Western.

My inner kid would love Unicorn Western. Hes one of the reasons I wrote it. I wrote it for my real kids, too. They talk back less but are meaner when they do. From the time he was five until he was around eight, my inner kid wanted to be a writer. This wasnt a profession, exactly. It was something to do in between fighting fires and crime. Though I wasnt willing to grant it exclusivity, I felt the magic of writing at a primitive level. I understood that being a writer gives an artist a way to make something from nothing, like a magician, but with pages and ink for smoke and mirrors.

My mom was a secretary at TRW before I was born. She typed eighty words a minute on her IBM Selectric. Though she never used it, we had another electric from Sears, on a high shelf in a forgotten closet. The typewriter weighed, like, three of me. A black snake coiled from its juggernauts body into the wall. You flipped its switch to fill the room with a jet engines roar. It would scream for food, so Mom would feed the beast with a sheet of white then give it lines of black with a speed that amazed me.

Clickity-clackity-clickity-clackity-clickity-clackity-clickity-clackity-clickity-clackity-clickity-clackity-DING!

My mom would type for a half page then rip the page from the monsters mouth. There were stories on those pages, like in books, but better because they came from my mom. Her stories were simple, and though I remember none specifically, Im certain they were parables of small boys who should improve their table manners, or perhaps be nicer to their younger sister. Probably with scary dolls or some other evidence of her twisted whimsy.

One day, Pop brought home a typewriter, also from Sears. It was a manual, though it had the same beige, hard plastic cover. And it was smaller; it had no cord and carried no current. Its ribbon was filthy; it got all over my fingers and paper. There was no Backspace to erase my mistakes.

But it was mine: Pop bought it for me and said I could use it whenever I wanted.

I started writing that day. Most of my early work was about robots, space, and probably He-Man, though I do remember one story with Spiderman (in an epic battle with a monster snowman).

Im sure each new story was as horrible as the one before it. My parents and teachers seemed plenty impressed, but I was only five and not yet familiar with strained patience. Actually, Im sure I was plenty familiar, having caused mine and my neighbors share, but I didnt know what it looked like on others. I still sometimes miss it.

Regardless, I wanted to share a LOT, especially at school. I was kindergarten age, but not in kindergarten, fortunate enough to go to a school without any grades. Our neighborhood school was awful. My oldest sister, Katie, went there until one of the teachers told my father in conference that some kids are destined for mediocrity and that everyone would be a lot happier if they accepted it. The school was a mile and a half from our house. Still, if we were home, we would have heard his anger crashing through the campus. My parents pulled Katie out of school and enrolled her in McKinney Day School private and a bit beyond our means.