 |
Essay: A Writer at HeartSunday, May 10, 1998. 8:30 a.m.When people complement me on my writing style, I usually respond by saying I write like I talk, or like I would if I talked very much. Having kept my journal on paper for a week or so now, I've come to realize that's not really true. Usually, when I write a journal entry, I'm at a computer typing, and my fingers can come close to keeping up with my train of thought. Keeping a paper journal, and then typing it in, I notice things in my writing I'd never use in day to day speech. As long as I can remember, writing has come easily to me. I don't know if it's a natural trait, good schooling in the language, or all the books I've devoured in my lifetime. Most likely, it is a combination of the three. I remember reading Black Beauty at age six or seven, and the procession of all things equine that followed. Later, there were Nancy Drew mysteries, Judy Blume books, and all the Black Stallion books I could find. Magic and fantasy found their way in, now and again, with Edgar Egar's Half Magic, and the book I never got to finish, The Active Enzyme, Lemon-freshened Junior High School Witch, because of the skating accident I had, and I never went back to that summer day care. Later, my love of Star Trek got me into that series, and I must have read most all the paperbacks, into the #60's or so, not to mention a few of the Next Generation series. The quality of the writing seemed to go downhill, and I got tired of the same old plots and found something new to read. That was about when Delina introduced me to Dragonlance and Anne McCaffrey. I didn't really get into Dragonlance, but Anne McCaffrey led to David Eddings, Raymond Feist, Tad Williams, and a host of others. Reading has always been an escape for me, and since escapes requiring strenuous activity were out of my league, I read a lot. It was about seventh grade when I started trying to write for myself, making up stories where my friends and I had real, live horses, and later, one where we had our own band, as music has always been another great love of mine. My first stories were very amateurish, but even then, some of my writing style showed through. I remember letting my mom read one little short-short (less than three pages) I wrote on a whim. I think she must have asked to see something I'd written. I had something longer I was working on, but I was hesitant to show that to her, so I gave her the littlest piece I'd done. She read it, asked where the rest was (it was complete), and laughed when I told her that was it. That incident, along with her comment about it being a waste of money when I was going to ask my teacher if she'd laminate a drawing I was rather proud of (I'd had one on display in our art classroom, and someone came in and tore it to pieces), had a lot to do with my pulling away from her, and losing my trust in her; but that's another story. I remember hating to diagram sentences in school, and learning how this kind of word belonged next to that kind of word. I knew all those things about verb tenses and possessive pronouns innately. I may not have had the terms for them, but I knew how a sentence should look and sound, and how to fix one that was wrong. That part of English class always annoyed me, but when it came to the writing itself, I always did well. I think I probably got better grades on my Government essays than I really deserved for the material I knew, because I could make it sound like I really knew what I was talking about, even when I was just pulling half-remembered bits of information out of the air. My writing and storytelling abilities really paid off in that class. Writing is something I know I'm fairly good at. Whether it is a learned talent or a God-given one, it seems to be one I am well suited to use. Even if I find a career doing something entirely different, I think I'll always be a writer at heart. || Home | Journal Index ||
 
|
![[ Open Pages ]](oplogo.gif){kind=small}