Every time I write a new entry for my blog, whether it be a short story, a piece of poetry, a feature article, an idea or just a musing, I always like to attach a little photograph or illustration along with the piece of writing. I always try to do this, especially with short stories, because I feel it helps the reader to visualise the words and engage with the characters and plot (as well as brightening up the entry a bit too).
Recently, however, I've realised that this compuslive habbit of having a picture to go with words, is something I've been doing since my early childhood.
My first memory of writing and discovering my love for storytelling was when I was about four or five years old. Around this time, my mum went back to work and my grandpa would look after me and teach me how to bake cakes, make home videos with his camcorder, how to sew, how to plant and attend to flowers, how to look after animals, how to draw and how to write stories (as well as how to make a mess). To keep me amused, he would get two pieces of blank A4 paper and fold them in half. He would then open the paper again and tell me to draw a picture in the top half of the page and write a story to go with it in the bottom half. I would eagerly colour in with my crayons and frantically scribble down words with my pencil until I had a perfect fairytale and an illustration to accompany it. My grandpa did the same and once we had finished, we would swap stories and read.
My grandpa died when I was six years old so I didn't have much time with him but I do believe that the time I did have with him was very important to the person I am now. I am a very creative and determined person and I believe a lot of that is down to him. Realising that I still carry on a little tradition of ours twelve years on without even noticing that I'm doing it has made me smile. Its definitely a happy habbit.
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