Welcome to my new blog, The Storyteller’s Haunt.

You can call me A. G. Swift, (writer, reader, fellow human being who does very human things)

In light of this being my first blog post I’d like to tell you my own story and what ultimately led me here, to writing this today.

A name that tells a story

The name of this blog, The Storyteller’s Haunt, perfectly describes a portion of my own story in a few short words. I am the storyteller, and this is the place I come for relief from the stories that haunt me.

Stories drew me in like a hummingbird to flower

Stories have been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I enjoyed consuming literature from a very young age (my favorite was Good Night Gorilla; I ate 3 copies).

Stories drew me in like a hummingbird to flowers. During my childhood I spent far more time reading than I did interacting with other people. When I wasn’t reading, I was daydreaming; editing the stories I read in my mind to see how I would fit into them, or creating new ones all my own. I was happy.

4-year-old me took that as a challenge

When I was little, I loved watching the movie, Spirit; Stallion of the Cimmaron over and over again. I had the script memorized. There was one quote in the beginning that was particularly memorable for me “This is a story that cannot be found in a book.”

4-year-old me took that as a challenge. I grabbed a stack of printer paper, stapled one side together, and got to work. I was about 6 pages in when I realized that it was too big of a project for me to finish. I couldn’t do it the justice I had imagined. Disappointed, I gave up and went back to reading.

My sister and I decided to write a book together

When I was 9, my sister and I decided to write a book together. It was a grand idea about a herd of mustang horses. But about a week in we both realized that our idea didn’t have nearly as much plot as we had initially thought, so we gave up and moved on.

To be an author, one must get published

But this time quitting hurt more. I had genuinely believed we were going to get somewhere, and one day, we would see that book in print on the bookshelf. But after that project fell through, I came to the conclusion that I would never be an author, no matter how much I wanted to be.

Because to be an author one must get published.

I didn’t know much about publishing, but from what I did understand one needed connections and money. I was about as broke as any 9-year-old and I didn’t know how to talk to people outside of my own family. And if I didn’t already know anyone by then, I never had a chance.

But the desire to write never left me

But the desire to write never left me. As a teen, I stumbled upon the world of fanfiction and I wrote several works of my own.

But one day by chance I stumbled upon something that changed everything for me.

Self-publishing.

I had no idea it existed before that moment, and during that rabbit hole of research I also reviewed the idea of traditional publishing. Neither answer would be easy, but I finally had something to hope for.

I started writing again and this time the story came to me easily.

The story came alive in my hands

I had been obsessed with parrots at the time, so, naturally, I searched for novels with parrots as the main characters. I couldn’t find a single one (unless you count a shapeshifter, which I don’t). So I decided to write the story I wanted to read.

I didn’t have a computer at the time, so I got a lined notebook and wrote in there. It was infuriating. I filled a handful of pages, but if I made a typo, it was there to stay (staring at me menacingly every time I opened those pages), so I got a second book to fix the issues because those typos had the power to steer me away from writing at all. And then I learned about syntax and grammar, and I realized that a second book wasn’t going to work.

Eventually I did get access to a computer and was able to type my drafts there. And boy did that change everything. No more sore hands, no more ripped or stained pages, no more untouchable typos. I was actually making progress.

The story came alive in my hands. The more I worked, the more excited I got. Ideas would come to me out of nowhere; I felt as if these were real people, their ghosts whispering their life story into my ears.

But eventually I lost momentum

But eventually I lost momentum. I hit a place in my life as a whole that led to some serious burnout and emotional instability (thank you, teenage hormones). The things I loved couldn’t help me anymore. I felt numb in a way, but with a longing that couldn’t be helped by anyone or anything.

I started to spiral and I couldn’t stop.

At my darkest point, I had decided that stories were a distraction. They weren’t going to help me. I feared that I was jaded and confused; much of my understanding of the world and people came from fiction.

The stories haunted me

I decided to quit. No writing, no reading, and no daydreaming. Get back to reality. I had to watch my thoughts constantly and I realized just how much I used stories to understand the world around me. It had to stop (and in doing so I felt like I had finally broken something inside me).

The stories haunted me. Always there, whispering and showing me vivid images of lives and ideas that never lived. Sleep brought dreams, stories from the subconscious that cannot be blocked out.

Every day got harder and harder. I couldn’t get rid of the stories, I gave everything I could, but they just wouldn’t die. 3 months of this passed before I finally broke; this wasn’t a fight I could win.

I gave in and started to write

I gave in and started to write. I let myself think freely again, and I let the stories in.

But the haunting never stopped.

I guess the stories felt threatened by my assassination attempt. It had been a mental battle of endurance and starvation, and the stories had won. But now they wanted more than just my surrender. They wanted everything; my mind, my time, my loyalty. And they weren’t going to take no for an answer.

Writing anything at all was enough at first, but the strongest, most insistent need to do more built up over time.

My thoughts are always on the stories

My thoughts are always on the stories or on keeping them at bay. If ignored, they keep me awake at night until I write. My hands want for a pencil or keyboard whenever they stand empty. And the inspiration just keeps coming.

A ravenous unquenchable hunger that I alone have been tasked to feed.

I won’t judge this as a good or bad thing; I’ve done this to myself. But it’s not the image I had in mind when I had imagined myself as a writer at 4 years old.

I write because of the stories that haunt me

Everyone has an underlying drive or reason for why they create; I write because of the stories that haunt me.

Welcome to The Storyteller’s Haunt.

A. G. Swift