Written as a college English assignment, this piece describes the forces that led her to writing, and how it has saved her since. I stopped going to school at age eleven. I can’t describe how unspeakably and irrevocably this changed my life, and my self. The elementary school summers were spent by majority at home, or with my family, so the Summer of Eleven felt no different. But once September rolled around, the alteration hit me in the gut like a cinder block. Suddenly I found myself alone in a dining room, unable to decipher the unending verbiage of a teacher’s instruction manual, trying to give myself an education while the neighborhood kids squealed gleefully outside,thonk-ing a basketball on the street, or trying to do tricks on their bikes. I’d never really fit in with my family, either, preferring school to home by a long shot, and now I was stuck here every. Stinking. Day. I became insecure, withdrawn, lonely, and probably difficult to deal with. It would have been so much easier, I reasoned, if there was a way to get away for a while. Some sort of vacation. Then at twelve or so, I found an answer. Reading had always been a necessary part of school, but this is where I really started to read the books I had, for understanding. Books like The Phantom of the Opera, Ella Enchanted, The Little White Horse; they opened up the dirty windows of my old imagination, and let in some sunshine. When I got lonely enough, I began to imagine characters, and lives, ones much more interesting and exciting than those in my reality. Instead of writing reports on Napoleon Bonaparte, and studying for gruesome Algebra exams, I jotted down little family trees in my binders, and drew doodles of these characters on my filler paper. And then I realized: this could be a book. My very first novel was finished in February 2010. I was thirteen. In some three hundred handwritten pages, it followed a boy named Nicholas, who was the rebel Prince of a terroristic nation, driven to overthrow his father, the King. Today, I cringe when I think of that draft. Horrors, it was awful. But there was also a new something that came with completion, something I was unfamiliar with – a sense of pride. Suddenly I using up journals like tissues, carrying them with me the way most tweens are glued to their cell phones these days. I began to fall in love with character development, creating stories around people instead of people for stories. Poetry also came quickly thereafter, which felt natural, since I’d been writing songs for as long as I can remember. Today, I am published. Perfectionism keeps my novels on the shelf, still, but a few articles and poetry have meandered their way to the collective screen. I plan to continue working, and publish real, actual books in the future. Writing has become a tangible extension of my mind, a direct highway from my heart, to my brain, to my fingertips. Sometimes I contemplate just stopping (usually when suffering from writer’s block, hyperventilating into a paper bag). Enough. You’re not good enough to do this. You’d just write another ridiculous Twilight, not real literature. Why bother? But once the blockage has cleared, I come to my senses. In the end, I need to write like the proverbial blonde man needs to surf. The reality of this is writing helps me to understand things. When I fell in love for the first time, songs and poems were flying out of me like bees from a downed hive. I had no idea what was wrong with me. Was I blushing? When did I ever blush? Why was I even considering skipping work for some high school basketball game? And, moreover, why couldn’t I focus on freaking anything?! Then, when it all came crashing down, words were all that could offer some comfort because, thanks to circumstances beyond my control, (homeschool + always traveling + working for your family = no friends) I didn’t really have a shoulder to cry on. Writing forced me to process thoughts and feelings in a way that gave the illusion of third person perspective – a helpful tool to the hormone riddled. There is a truth in the Rad Bradbury quote, “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you” but there is also a sweetness in knowing you have created something that has never existed before. It is the closest feeling to knowing real magic that I’ll ever get. I have also found this to be true: “The first draft of anything is shit.” ― Ernest Hemingway As for this course, I expect nothing from anybody. The extension of my education will be a useful tool as I continue to grow as a writer and a student. Hopefully, we learners can help each other through the material and offer some comfort and advice, since we are all temporarily traveling the same path, writers reaching for the same goals. Together, we travel as one.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
September 2016
Categories
All
|