Writer's Quest: A autobiography

Writer’s Quest: A Personal Narrative by Jacob Bencker

‘Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.’
-Benjamin Franklin

      Since I was young, I always enjoyed the art of storytelling. Not because I listened to a lot of excellent speakers or necessarily because I read a lot of books, but because it was an escape for me. My mother was emotionally abusive and very controlling. She would often throw child-like temper-tantrums whenever she couldn’t get her way. Essentially, it was either her way or not at all. And if one of us kids just happened to be at the service end of her wrath one unlucky day, she would yell, scream and tear apart our rooms out of rage, if she was infuriated enough. (Literally, she really did. The rooms themselves looked as if a tornado blew through them afterward.) Indeed, I needed an escape from the all the routine yelling, the expressing of how terrible of a person I was, and that I was the reason (anyone who she was angry at, really) for her anger. That escape was our basement.
      Once I realized that my room was no longer a shelter, I fled to the basement like I said; a place where she almost never came. It was that space where my imagination would be ignited and nurtured. We were very limited in video game and computer time, so the three of us needed something to do. While my siblings, Melanie and Sam found entertainment elsewhere, I created board games, built awesome Lego models and invented stories with my large collection of action figures. I wasn’t good at writing then, so if I came up with a story, I’d have to tell it to myself by acting them out with my action figures. Some scenarios would include: Megaman X and Cyber Flamdramon Vs. the rebellion of Zapper Zaku, Pyroman and Destructo, or Toa Marhi Hahli exploring an abandoned underwater base and fights a giant sea beast called Gadunka. Creating and inventing in this manor was not only a blast, it also helped me keep my sanity in an environment otherwise filled with stress.
      When I was about 15 or 16, my friends and I got interested in a game called the Star Wars Role Playing Game.  The Gamemaster would create a scenario, and his players would act it out in character. The game aspect of the RPG was based around leveling up to acquire feats and special skills that bolstered the individual or group’s overall strength to allow them to face increasingly difficult challenges. But, what really interested me was the story telling aspect of it. I wrote say, 15-20 pages worth of story material overall and I enjoyed sitting down once in a while to write them. While, my story itself was ‘interesting’ to listen to and the players really liked it, it didn’t give them the Role Playing feel that they came for at the meetings every month. I made it “novel-like” according to David. “Novel like?” I said, “That’s encouraging.” Indeed, it me gave me some confidence in my writing. In fact, I considered writing more often in my free time; but I was still a year shy of actually doing it.
      During the early summer of the following year, I turned in a 5 page review of a brilliant book called The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien; a book I adored by the way. For the review, I poured a lot of work into the piece, so that by the time I handed it I could honestly say it was the best of my hand. I thought I’d get an “A” for sure; what I got after being graded on it, however, shocked me: Mrs. Thorson, my experienced English teacher at the time said: “It looked professionally written. When I was reading it over, I wondered “did he copy this from somewhere else?” but I knew you wouldn’t do that, so I gave you the benefit of the doubt.” I said to myself, “What?! Did she just say professionally written? Wow.”
      Later in the summer I typed and gave a couple of documents to a handful of people to review. Essentially, to gauge how good they were. I got reactions like: “It’s very interesting,”, “yes…it kept my attention, I liked it,” and, “you should be a writer!” However the top comments I received were from my friend Evan and my grandmother. “Wow, Jacob. It’s great! You should be a writer.” Evan said with a look of amazement, “its magnificently written Jacob.” said an equally impressed grandmother of mine. Wow!
      In the fall, I sat down to consider the scope of the year prior, primarily where I was and how far I’ve come in my writing. I dreamed of writing a 9-12 part book series on an intricate fantasy world called Elomnia and the wars that took place inside her. Furthermore, I had in mind a few other un-related plots that sounded interesting to explore as well.  I looked to the sky and could not but help believe that God, The Lord of Hosts, The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, had something to do with all of this. After all, it was surely by His hand I received that devotional page from Mrs. Seaver, only a school year before, that applied so much to my circumstances that it couldn't have fallen there by any other means.
      Mrs. Seaver, one of the only other real Christians I knew at the school, said when she gave the page to me, "I want you to have this. I was reading my devotional today and I thought of you."  The page talked about book writing and letting your life be the story instead of making a book to instruct people (something I was seriously considering to do). Furthermore, it even asked at the end "if someone were to read your life like a book, would they find Jesus in its pages?" I never told her I was planning on writing a book, nor did I mention to her anything about being interested in writing in general. She gave it to me, merely because she thought of me while reading it. Never before or after did Mrs. Seaver give me anything like that, or even showing me a devotional she liked for that matter; never; that’s what struck me as very peculiar about the whole thing. Now, I'm not trying to find an excuse in order to attribute some god for the reason why I received this gift, but what I am saying is that there is no other possible way that I could get something like this that applied so much to my circumstances. There’s no way for that devotional to have found its way into my hands otherwise, because I don’t read those types devotionals.
      Anyway, I wanted to story tell. I didn’t just want to act out a story with my action figures like did when I was young or watch a “movie” of a book in the theatre of my mind. No, I wanted to write, I wanted to utilize the skills that I had recently come to grips with, and I wanted to make those stories permanent; ones not dependent on my own remembrance or skills as a speaker to tell. I wanted to story-tell with words; on paper. “But where should I start?” I asked myself, “I don’t want to start writing the Elomnia books yet; I wanna wait until I am more experienced before those. No, I’ll write something shorter. Something interesting enough for me to explore in novel form.”
      Eventually, my writing improvement quest brought me to my cousin who soon connected me to WDC. After becoming familiar with the site, I signed up for an Exploratory Writing class, at my Cuz’s request of course. With high hopes mixed with a little doubt, I plan to get settled into WDC soon and share my materials with fellow writers; a luxury I really haven’t had yet. Will people like my stories? Maybe. But whatever happens to me, at least I know I can write. And at least I know I can write for the Glory of Christ.

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