Biography
Or who on earth is this weirdo, anyway?
I was born in the year of the Rooster at Holy Cross Hospital, to my mother (surprise!) who already had two kids, one of which was to be very confused when Mom and Dad, who had gone to the hospital because "Mommy's leg hurt", came home with a new baby sister. Apparently, having kids was all the rage that month, and so what with the overflow in the nursery, I was placed in a broom closet until the blood clot in Mom's leg could be taken care of. I blame that broom closet for almost everything that has ever gone wrong in my life.
One year and a coupla months later, Mom went back to the hospital and had my younger brother, on whom I blame everything else.
Me. Sort of. |
Growing up as one of four children in the Washington DC metro area was fun, for the most part. It meant that in grade school we would go to the National Air and Space Museum at least once a year, and make ourselves sick on dehydrated "space ice cream". It also meant that I grew up surrounded by family, as my parents' families were generally of the Irish Catholic sort that believe that children are our future, and that said children when they grow up should stay pretty much close to home so that they can either feed off of their parents for as long as possible or take care of them in their old age. It is because of both Mom's family, which was rather young and filled with Uncles that loved to play with small childrens' minds, and my dad's family, which never met a joke that they didn't like, that I came to the realization that life just isn't any fun if you take it too seriously.
My father had, like me, always wanted to be a writer, but had never had any success at getting his work published, so when I was very young (sometime around when I was four, I think), he started up a family magazine, in which he could showcase the brilliance of his family of four massively creative children, and generally have a grand old time sending his family's artwork out to everyone he knew. Thus I learned, from a very young age, that you will get no where in this life as an artist without nepotism and access to a copy machine.
My first grade teacher realized my genius at the tender age of six when she wrote home on my report card that "Isabel is a very nice little girl, but does she know how to sit?" Such behavior, a few years later, would have likely put me on medication, but this was the mid-eighties, and Riddilin had yet to be discovered as the panacea for childhood, so I got to continue on my restless, twitchy, trying to sit crosslegged in a school desk ways without being given the chance to become a grade school drug dealer.
In fifth grade I discovered how to get by in English class on my wits alone, without all the extra work involved in actual research, and thus I coasted along until the end of high school as a B average procrastinator.
In seventh grade, I received my first rejection letter. I still have it.
It wasn't until eleventh grade that I realized that I really, truly wanted to be a writer, and not anything else. This was after I had found the magical online reading audience of XMen fanfiction, which I utilized to improve my skills at the craft, and of course, to improve my standing as a first class geek. Though perseverence, and a great deal of advice from older, wiser XMen and Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fans, I began to take a great deal of confidence and pride in my writing. I was still a rabid procrastinator, but now it was not simply to prove that I could wait till the last minute to write a paper, but also because all those other minutes could be better used in writing stories about characters owned and created by someone else.
I eventually gave up on fanfiction, though I still read it and try to pass on some of the wisdom offered me through my middle and high school years. Instead I went on to college, the magical land of ultra-late nights and not having to answer to your parents the next morning, and actually took on the monumental task of taking my writing seriously. I eventually gave up on that as well, though I now have a slightly better grasp of English grammar.
These days, I live with two of my best friends and five cats in a three bedroom apartment in central Florida, where I tease the cats, read lots of great fiction and poetry by authors who also don't take themselves too seriously, and try to get my work published. Hopefully, I will soon be able to add "going to work" to that list.
Iz Church, July, 2003 |
