Posted 1:26 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2023
A Miserable Time to Be a Writer--Literacy Narrative
I was in second grade when I was first introduced to Roald Dahl. One of my teachers recommended a book of his, and though I’d heard of him, I hadn’t read any of his work. Recognizing his prominence, I gave it a shot. I finished the book faster than any other that I’d read before that, and quickly became obsessed with Dahl’s style. He had a way of writing that was unique from anything I could find on any shelf in the school library. I found myself reading any Dahl book that I could get my hands on, failing to find even one that I didn’t love. Dahl had the most creative structure to his stories, and his voice often changed from novel to novel. Since Dahl was Welsh, some instances of foreign sounding grammar likely stemmed from differences in dialect. Still, to a kid who saw all his books as infallible, every inconsistency was just another stroke of creative genius. Even today, I would vouch for my younger self, and I’m sure many English professionals will concur: His works are some of the best in their genre. So naturally (maybe partially on purpose), some of his styles, ideas and humor started to work their way into my own writing.
Somewhere in the middle of my obsession, I had a writing assignment given to me in English class. It was likely a personal narrative, though I don’t remember specifically what it was that I’d been writing about. The one thing that I distinctly remember is writing a sentence that had an error in it. I hate to call it an error, as it was written this way completely on purpose. I did this because of the book I had been reading at the time. It had the same kind of error in it, and it was written so masterfully that I couldn’t help but borrow the idea for my own work, when I saw the opportunity. I was so proud of myself for creating something that was above me, for taking inspiration from my favorite author and incorporating part of him into something that I made.
I’d finished my draft, just as it was time to have our work reviewed by the teacher. When it was my turn, I handed her my notebook, trying my hardest not to stare while she read it. Once she was done reading, she looked up, smiled, and told me that it looked really good so far. Then she pointed to a spot on the page and said, “Just this sentence needs fixing.” I was fairly certain that I knew what she was pointing to before my eyes could find it. Sure enough, it was the sentence that I was so proud of, the one I’d secretly hoped she would notice. But she wasn’t impressed by it, she just saw an error.
I tried to explain it to her, that it was intentional, that I wanted it to be unique and eye-catching. As I was saying this, she looked at me contemplatively. As if I was trying to explain something that I didn’t fully understand. Then, when she saw that I was unable to accurately display my reasoning, her look became more lucid. This new look made me feel like she was trying to find my angle. Like I’d said something that I wasn’t supposed to. Then she gently told me to rewrite it so that it agreed with the guidelines of what was taught in class and handed me back my notebook. I walked back to my desk and erased the line. I sat there for the rest of class, staring at the page, trying to come up with a replacement sentence. As the bell rang, and my classmates began packing up their writing supplies, I hastily scribbled down a mediocre, grammatically correct sentence. During the next few classes, I revised my story. By the time the final draft was due, the mediocre sentence had remained unchanged.
We spent some time reading each other's stories, and they were all garbage. Written for a grade, and with no heart put in. And my work was right down there with them, blending in perfectly as another soulless English assignment. In one moment, as I glanced around the room, I could see it in all of their faces. I realized that nobody else cared about reading any of the stories that their classmates had written. They sure as hell didn’t care what anyone thought of their work, as they knew that they hadn’t done anything for which they could expect any praise. I realized this and began to find myself pitying my own naive thinking. No one cared about what I had to say, and this class wasn’t meant to make an author out of me. Believing that it was, even for a second, had allowed it to instead make a fool out of me.
That experience, along with many others like it, had been contributing factors in my slow descent into hating school, as well as most of my peers that surrounded me. So much so that some teachers even contacted my parents about my negativity, as most of what I was saying in the classroom had become filled with venom. At the time, I hadn’t even realized how bad it’d become, though I now can see why I had people concerned. Of course, my life outside the classroom had been completely normal, and the bitterness was completely focused on teachers, which was not my intention. I regret my selfishness and having taken my anger out on them. Even after realizing the wrongness of my actions, I continued to incorporate sarcasm and sour attitude into my assignments as I got older. In high school, my writing became prettier, yet increasingly monotonous, and just as angry. I’ve heard many stories of high school English curriculums being destructive and time-wasting, which to me was completely unacceptable. For most of high school, that was my experience.
The second semester of my senior year, I took a class in creative writing. I had a great teacher, who explained during the first-class period that most of what we were to write would be on personal experiences, and poetry. At first, I was annoyed, considering the fact that the class was called ‘Creative Writing’, which I took to mean fictional writing. Not only that, but personal narratives were the only thing we wrote about in previous English classes, and I was sick of it. But then, as the class progressed, under that teacher, I composed some of the greatest writing that I’d ever made. Writing that I could actually take pride in, a feeling I hadn’t experienced in many years. She would meet with each student, read their work, and help them revise it. She gave me extremely useful advice, and I owe the success of my work almost entirely to her.
Her advice extended beyond writing, as she talked to me regularly about my future plans, about what I wanted to do in life (which I didn’t know at all). Then one day she told me that my writing really impressed her, and if I was interested, I should major in English or creative writing. I’ve thought about that a lot since then and have recently committed to taking a creative writing minor.
I have nearly forgotten my experience with the story I wrote in elementary school, though I’ve held on to some of the anger that it helped brew. These days, I don’t fill my work with sarcastic jabs and piss and vinegar, I simply write. I write as beautifully and as elegantly as I can, and if my work falls outside of the rubric’s guidelines, so be it. My goal has now become not to change my work to fit what the professor wants, but to make it such an amazing piece that they won’t mind its imperfections.