This blog almost didn’t get written. I’m currently sat on a seat in Crewe train station. It’s an exceedingly hot August afternoon, and I’ve been given the gift of half an hour to work on my blog; which is a rare and pleasant treat. Yet, I found myself not wanting to write my blog, because I’m in the middle of Gideon The Ninth by Tamsin Muir and its extraordinary! The characters are real, living people, the writing just bursts off the page in a way that I would kill to be able to achieve, and the world that the author has built is so vivid and detailed that it almost feels like you could reach out and touch it. As a result, I was sorely tempted to delve into my bag and fish out the book, to ignore this post and to enjoy half an hour in the company of my new friends.
In the end, I was strong, I resisted, and I began writing, because it seemed like the sensible grown-up thing to do. But I love that the scribblings of ink between two flimsy covers can be that powerful, they almost derailed my plans and lured me into their clutches, and I had to work quite hard to stop them.
This reminds me of being little, and my early experiences of the power which stories have always had over me. I remember kneeling up in bed at night and sticking my head through the curtains to read the Worst Witch by the light of the street lamps outside, and I remember the monoliths eating Jupiter in the film adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010 (a SUPER underrated film!) in a way which felt so wondrous and alien that I was captivated by it.
Memories like these began a life-long love affair with stories. It didn’t matter what media they used, whether it was a book, a film, a cartoon on TV, or a comic book, it always made more sense to me to have an adventure in another world than to spend time in this one. The word ‘escapism’ is often sneered at in the modern creative world, but to me, this has always been the One True Purpose of Storytelling, to escape from this world and into one which is far more alluring.
It’s not that I had a bad childhood or anything, it’s just that when I entered my teen years, I began to understand that I was trans. I didn’t know the word ‘trans’ back on the mid 90’s, I just knew that I thought about what it would be like to be a girl A LOT, and thought that this meant there was something wrong with me, something that I could never tell anyone because they would immediately think I was a pervert or a deviant.
So, I had to try to fit into my gender assigned at birth. I knew I couldn’t do that in the ways that the most boisterous teenage boys did, with their love of football, play-fighting, and fart jokes, but there were certain nerdy-boy stereotypes that fitted me quite well, and so I clung onto them, hoping that they would give me an identity to hold onto that made sense to me, and help me to be the boy that everyone expected of me.
The first of these stereotypes was that of the muso; I loved music, played a bit of keyboard, and threw myself into playing in a band. I hoped this would give me a bit of a popularity boost as it was a pastime that was considered to be quite cool. I didn’t have much luck with that, but I enjoyed the creativity that came with songwriting, and performing on stage allowed me to play a character who was calm and confident in a way that I could never be in ‘real life’.
The second of these stereotypes was that of the sci-fi nerd. Now, you have to remember that in the 90’s, being into sci-fi was definitely not the kind-of-trendy thing that it is today, and so all thoughts of popularity quickly evaporated, but I loved the stories so much that being a sci-fi nerd made total sense to me, and I still identify that way today, after I have come out.
The nerdy community also allowed me to meet people (mostly boys, sadly) who weren’t going to want to wrestle, or play football at lunchtimes, which was a bit of a reprieve from all the macho nonsense that swirls around teenage boys like a tornado. And although I know that nerdy fandom can be super toxic these days, I still believe that the nerd community is mostly an inclusive, thoughtful place.
Escaping into books, films, and music didn’t just give me a place to express a type of semi-acceptable boy-like gender identity, it also gave me somewhere to escape to, where I wasn’t thinking about gender identity at all. I mean, if you’re watching Captain Sisko work out how to deal with a tense situation in the war with Founders, you’re not generally worried about whether your body is all wrong! This gave me some respite from having to struggle with my identity all the time, so it was something I leaned on a lot.
Years, later, after I came out, I did try to go back to playing music, and did one gig playing some songs I’d written. But I found that the shouty personality which I’d traditionally used on stage didn’t fit me any more. I don’t know if that’s entirely due to trans stuff, or whether my age (41), or the fact that I’ve played lots of gigs over the years, have got anything to do with it, but whatever the reasons, I decided to take a break from playing.
I did miss the creative outlet that songwriting had given me, though. And writing the lyrics had always been the most fulfilling part of that process anyway, so I tried my hand at writing stories instead.
With writing, you can do it at home, you don’t have the stressful task of organising and promoting gigs, and you don’t need lots of space and equipment to practice, which suits me just fine at the moment!
Having got started with writing, I now find that I can’t stop, and have got one finished, unreleased book in the bank, and plans for three more ahead of me. The big difference between writing and all of the creative things I’ve done before, however, is that now I’m not hiding in the stories; I’m using them to explore who I actually am, and to express my true self. This means that throughout my life, I’ve used stories as an escape, a form of self-expression, and a form of self-exploration. I totally understand that there are different art forms out there that fulfil these same functions for people all over the world; they are all beyond precious, and we must cherish them.
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