It's always been there by Eric Beetner

 When you look back over your childhood and early life, can you see where being a writer, or indeed a crime writer, began for you? Were there definitive moments that sealed your fate?

I never used to think I was one of those people who knew very early on I wanted to write. Certainly not crime novels. 

When I started writing anything, I started with screenplays because I loved movies and I knew I wanted to make it my career. I was an eclectic screenwriter, something I soon learned is not valued in Hollywood. If I wrote one genre, I’d want to switch it up for the next thing. So I wrote dark comedies, serious drama, action-adventure, horror, and one or two crime stories that veered into Noir.

However – like a character in a mystery novel, I uncovered a previously forgotten clue to my future quite unexpectedly.

My father used to keep old school work from my sister and I and once, when he moved houses, we had a chance to go through some of the old stuff to sort out what was worth keeping, if any of it. Amid the construction paper art projects, report cards better left forgotten and math worksheets, I found a curious artifact.

It was a story I had written. Judging by the handwriting, I had to be maybe 7 or 8, perhaps even younger (though I hate to admit my handwriting hasn’t improved a whole lot since then). It didn’t appear to be written for any school assignment. It was undated and came complete with an illustration in lines even more amateurish than my handwriting. 

When I read it I was shocked to find that it was a crime story. There was a kidnapping, a car chase, a gun! I have no idea why I wrote the story or what inspired me to write my first short story about a crime. I had forgotten it entirely and I didn’t find any others. I assume I knew even then that it was dreadfully bad and I held off writing more until I knew what the hell I was doing.

But it showed me that crime writing was always in there. It may have lain dormant for a few decades, but I had set my path as a crime writer long before I could punctuate dialogue or spell ambulance correctly.

Sometimes the writing chooses you, I guess.