Blog 8

It only takes a single idea to change a life. One firefly in the night of your mind to illuminate a new path. A path that can bring you into the darkest depth of your mind where ideas linger on limbs waiting to be picked like a ripe apple. I ignored that path for many years, mainly because what writing was linked to in my mind and what I was taught writing was in school. When you are younger writing is strictly how you write, whether it be in cursive or print, and your grammar along with spelling. I was good at none of that so writing was something I did only if required to do so. Then it became evident that technology was intimately twined with writing and it had been so for the past years but I had not seen this. Again because of the stigma writing held in my mind. But when that stigma was left in the dirt and I took the path illuminated I found that there were more than ideas lingering in my mind. My definition of writing was in fact rewritten and someone who hated writing became one who relied on writing. It has now become something that drives me to wake up in the morning, something that makes all the misspellings worth making, something that has changed my life.



It seems that culture dictates what a child learns in school and how they learn it. The levels they should achieve in each grade is something that is “standard” across the board of culture. A kindergartner should know the relationship between letters and the sounds they make. They should know what capital and lower case letters look like and they should know how to spell their first and last name. A first grader should be able to write complete sentences with correct capitalization and punctuation. Also they should be able to read aloud first grade books without trouble. A second grader should be able to recognize and spell irregularly spelled words such as because and upon. A wider vocabulary should be used and they are able to read fluently with expression. So what happens to the children that cannot meet these expectations? Or perhaps meet them late? The cultural values such as the above make it clear when a child cannot read at the predicted age. The child must adapt and find their own way to cope with their short coming.


As a dyslexic child I could not read and had a hard time writing. I was never up to standards so I found my own way of coping with this problem. I coped till third grade because no one knew I had a problem. All my teachers before had assumed I could read because when they would send books home for me to read to my parents my mother would always read them to me first. She would nicely point to each word as she spoke and I would carefully memorize each word as she pointed to it. So when I would return to school with the book I could “read” it perfectly to the teacher. And so it went till the end of second grade when my teacher Ms. Adams suggested that I be tested by the Child Study Teams because she had seen that I was struggling with reading and had difficulty spelling. After I took the test I was classified as a dyslexic. Which meant starting in the fall I would be in “special” reading classes. These classes focused on bringing my low reading level up to third grade standards along with working on my spelling and correcting my writing habits. Third grade standards which by culture’s definition meant I should have been reading chapter books with comprehension and no problem. I should also have been able to use prefixes, suffixes, root words and other such strategies to sound out and identify unfamiliar words. Yet I could not, for some reason my brain just would not comprehend it. These “special” classes were supposed to help. I found out that the way I wrote the letter R was wrong, that it should face the right not the left. It was in these classes that I started to read and to read for real. It was also in these classes that I would stay till fifth grade.


When the middle of my fifth grade year came along I was deemed “normal” enough to go into the regular English classes with my friends. As far as society and culture go I was up to par. As a fifth grader I was able to read text fluently, not always with a complete understanding, but I read fluently. I was able to write a well organized, multi-paragraph essay with a central idea. All of those were things our culture values and sees as important in a fifth grader’s life. My now up to par writing skills were put to the test in these “normal” classes. I had writing assignments and picture prompts to do. I remember handing in my first picture prompt to my teacher, Mrs. Cameron, very happy with it and quite confident that I would get a good grade. I also remember getting it back and being very ashamed of the low grade written in red and the comment to always check my spelling. The funny part was I had checked my spelling and all the words had looked fine to me. Perhaps if I had let my mum or dad look over it the assignment would have been better. But I was too embarrassed to share my writing with my parents. In this class I learned that writing was correct spelling and proper grammar. No matter how many times I would ask spelling would count and I grew to hate that phrase with a fiery passion. I hated how much effort I put into it and how much red would always end up on my paper. I hated how no matter what I did my writing was never up to par. I hated writing.


That hate for writing stayed with me in sixth and seventh grade. It might have even increased because I stumbled upon that thing called technology. Now I thought spell check would be my savior. What better then something that could correct my spelling errors! Too bad I could never pick the right word. The word was spelled correctly but it was the incorrect word. Sixth and seventh grade seemed to be years filled with lots and lots of writing. It was also filled with frustration because I could not write and I hated that. So I needed to find some way to escape a world where spelling always counted and spell check never worked for me. I found that escape in books. Not just any old genre of books but Fantasy books. I loved the elves and the magic. I loved the fact that it let me get away from writing. The spelling was always perfect and that perfection just added to the greatness and wonder that was a books.


Perhaps this is where my redemption story begins or at least the seed is planted. As I sat in the Woodglen Middle School library one lunch period reading I paused for whatever reason and looked around at all the hundreds of books and it hit me. All of these books had been written by people. Which had to mean that writing to someone else was not what writing was to me because if that was the case then everyone would avoid it like the plague. So there must be a population of people out there who enjoyed writing. A baffling thought really because of how I felt about it and I was a jealous because I had no clue what made them like it. Then again their spelling was perfect unlike mine. Too bad I did not know that there are editors who read books to correct grammar and fix spelling. Perhaps if I had known that then I would have thrown myself with abandon at the idea of writing for fun. Instead I finished out my seventh grade career still hating this dreadful thing called writing but loving that others could write these books I read. These books that enchanted me. These books that made me want to take that path into the darkest depths of my mind to pick those apples of ideas that would make me write.


But I shied away for just a little longer. After all it was summer vacation I had the whole summer at the beach to look forward too. I did not have to write. I could relax. There would be plenty of writing in eighth grade after all it was the year that was supposed to prep me for high school. So I thought I could get away without writing all vacation. When the white canvas of summer was splayed out before me in June I was quite content to paint it with everything other then writing. But that crimson splash of literary intervention threw itself right across my beautiful summer. It was that intervention that sent me sprinting down that path the fire fly illuminated.


It is truly funny sometimes how such small things can create such huge shockwaves. How the fact that my older brother, Spencer, drawing a map could turn me into an author. A map that he was drawing for his book he said he was going to write. The ink on the paper painted a land that looked so amazing to me with a chain of mountains in the south that resembled a dragon’s maw and islands to the north that bridged two lands together. When Spencer started to tell me about his book and what was going to happen I was hooked. I wanted to write one of my own. So I took a lilac notebook from the art draw and proclaimed I was going to write a book. I put pencil to paper and wrote. Spelling was not an issue I told myself because no one would ever read this. I was writing for me and to prove to Spencer, my younger brother, Hunter, that I could write a book too. To prove to myself that I could write a book.


It was relaxing as I started to spin a story. Between the story that I was writing, the fact that no one but me would read it and the ideas that hung on limbs begging for me to pick them to write in the notebook I was falling in love with writing. It was not a nice cliché romance falling in love. It was a hard core head over heels sort of falling in love. It was fast and it was passionate. It was sloppy and it was forceful. I was trying to make up for all those years I had shied away from this delightful path but it would not happen in just one day. I knew that this was going to be nothing short of an addiction.


Like all addictions it consumed my every thought and every moment. When I was not writing I was thinking of the next scene I would write or what new characters I could put in or I was calculating the outcome and writing outlines. When school started I continued and it seemed that the pain that writing used to be was gone. I did not mind writing essays for school because I knew that if I got frustrated I could always slip into my book whenever I wanted. Every spare moment I wrote. Then an exciting mile marker day came. I finished writing in that light purple notebook. Stopping was not in the equation; I knew I must continue. My characters demanded it of me. Leaving the rest of their story untold would be a criminal offense especially since I was just getting to the good part.


When I started to write in my green notebook it was summer again. Except this year I was on my way towards high school. A huge change was coming and it was then that I set myself a goal. I would be published before I graduated high school in four years. It was scary at first because that meant other people would have to read my work. Now that was scary because it brought me back to the days when spelling counted and I did not want to face that again but my writing had become so important in my life. It was my life. I began to draw in upon myself and into my writing. I stopped talking to friends who would laugh at me when I told them I was going to get published. But I should probably offer them some thanks because they made me want to get published. I wanted to prove them wrong. I wanted to prove anyone who had ever said my writing was bad because I could not spell or use proper grammar wrong. I was going to prove them all wrong.


By wanting to become a published author I was going against cultural norms. Most authors were at least college students if not older. There is a very small percentage of authors that are high schoolers and younger. It was something that went against the main stream and it seemed that most of the people around me were comparing me to that. They assumed that simply because the majority of authors were older then I that I would not be able to accomplish my goal. I just pushed their doubts aside and ignored them. I could go against what culture said was normal for authors. I would show everyone that there are always acceptations to the norm.


Everywhere I went I carried my notebook. It was a shame really that I had not bothered to make that connection with technology and writing. After all that is how all the big name authors get it done. Perhaps if I had noticed that oh so intimate bonding of the two my first book published would have been the first book in my series. But no silly me I was still going about it the old fashioned way. I might as well have just been typing it up on a typewriter for all the good those inked up pages would do. Somewhere between my euphoria of loving writing and my goal to get published I over looked computers; the one thing that makes publishing possible. I have no clue how I could have over looked this technological link because quite frankly it is quite a huge elephant of an obtrusion in writing. I am not quite sure when I realized that a manuscript had to be typed but when I did I diligently sat down and started typing from my notebooks. I also realized that what was in my notebooks was utter rubbish. I had come so far from that summer after seventh grade. I had learned to show things instead of telling them and I also found that typing out my book was a daunting task so I gave it up and went back to my notebooks. I like the old fashion pen and paper approach. So what if I would be the only one to ever read it. That was good enough for me. At least that is what I told myself. Yet there was still this burning desire to get published before I graduate high school and show everyone who doubted me that I could.


Senior year rolled around and I was still writing in my in notebooks, although I had finished the first book and was well into the second book of my series. But I only had about fifty pages of typed. The only other typed material was a plethora of short stories. Very discouraging. Yet a bit motivating at the same time. My time to get published was dripping away into dry sand never to be retrieved. So what was I to do? I sat at the computer and found an old short story A Black and White Never. I read it and I was a little appalled at how short it was because I saw so much potential. So I started adding a little here and a little there and twenty five pages later I still had a lot of ideas and I was nowhere close to an ending. During this I had come to terms with the fact that technology and writing were lovers just as writing and I were. So I started my romance with technology. It was everything my discovery for the love of writing was not. It was gentle and kind and easy to fall into. I was amazed by everything from the fact that I could edit and delete scenes without wasting pages in my notebook. What a revolutionary idea? How had I not stumbled upon this sooner? It was amazing and I felt dumb for never seeing this before because it was so much easier to just sit and open a vein at the keyboard then to do so with ink.


Typing the ideas that I plucked from my mind was so easy. It was so easy that I found myself expanding A Black and White Never. Near a hundred pages I realized this was no longer a short story but was instead what I had been looking for in my mind. This shabby novel of mine was going to be published before graduation. That idea set the flames of determination leaping within me. My affair with writing was rekindled in full as I wrote more then I had since that first summer and slowly my novel grew and I began to like… just a little. After seven turns of editing I had a perfect jewel of a story so I sent it out to be published and crossed my finger that something would happen in the next five months. Seven rejections came in the mail and I was starting to rethink my whole writing career. Because clearly my writing was not all that I thought it was. But it only took one phone call to change that and send my novel on a mad dash to the finish line. A dash through editing to layout to cover design to print. June sixth my book was officially on Amazon.com for sale. June sixteenth I graduated knowing that I had proven everyone who had ever laughed at me for writing wrong. I graduated Voorhees High School as a published author.


I did not stop there after all I had bought a lap top so my summer could be filled with typing. No more of that filling of the notebooks shenanigans. I was thoroughly in love with technology and what it could do for my writing. It had in fact changed the way I wrote because now I had the chance to write scenes that were books away and save them till I got there. My computer gave me new horizons to explore. I could send pieces out to friends to read and they could send it back with changes. My computer gave me freedom from being confined to editing as I wrote. I could just sit and write then go back later to look over it and with a few clicks I could fix it right up. This gave me the confidence I needed to tackle my notebooks.


So I turned my eyes back to my series and realized that my early writing was indeed horrible but that it was necessary. As was every other experience related to writing. Every story has to start somewhere. Mine started with a little girl who could not read and the chapter I just finished of my life told of a young woman finishing the first draft of the first book in her series. My shoddy early writing brought me to this point. If I had not started to write and write the way I did I would not be the writer I am today. If I had not left my fear of writing behind I would still hate it.


As I look back even though I would not change a single moment of the path I trod to get to this point with my writing I cannot help but wonder if it was different how it all would be now? Perhaps if I had been able to read and write at a young age I would be the prodigy child getting published in high school. Instead of the amazing rags to riches kind of story that I am. As I think on that I can say that I would most certainly be one of those cocky people who just brag on about their writing. I would not be the shy writer that I am. Yes I am proud of myself for getting published and when I have to define myself writing always comes into play because it defines me and it is a pretty big part of my life. But I am not so cocky as to go around throwing it out for all to see. Plus I am still shy about my writing I know that I have a lot that I need to learn and improve on. Which is why people rarely see any of my writing that I have not edited a dozen times. Call me a perfectionist but when it comes to my books I am. I do not want some sloppy book being published which then defines me as an author. I want only perfection published. So when people start to know my name as an author they will speak my name with reverence at the fact that I have writing talent.


This path that I wander down in the darkest depths of my mind is leading me to something great. But it has also seen me through things that are equally as great. It seems that my whole writing career has come from me continuously leaping over near impossible obstacles. I know given the chance to leap those obstacles again I would, except perhaps with a little more spring in my step. One idea can change a life because that idea could be the beginning of a book and it does not matter how you look at it but writing changes your life weather you read it or write it. Writing changes everything with a few well chosen eloquent words.