LJ Idol Week 10: Open Topic
“Did you always want to be a teacher, Mrs. D?” Despite what my resume would suggest, no, I did not, actually.
As long as I can remember, with the exception of those couple of times I flippantly declared I wanted to be a nurse or a teacher as a young child who didn’t really understand what those jobs actually entailed, I wanted to be a writer. I was already a reader; I literally took a book with me everywhere I went. It was an ongoing joke in my house that I was so absorbed in a story that I would not respond to anything, including when my mother would yell, “Fire!” Still to this day, reading is a necessity to relax. I wanted to create that immersive experience for others.
In fourth grade, our school had a Young Author’s Fair. We wrote a rough draft of a story, which our teacher proofread for grammar and spelling mistakes, and were provided a blank hardcover book for our final draft with illustrations. The completed products would then be on display in the library as each class completed a walk through and pursued the literary options. I was so excited by the assignment that I went home and wrote the whole story in one evening.
Soon after, I started writing a novel at home about a pair of best friends whose relationship is challenged when one of the girls suddenly becomes popular. I worked on it for a long time, but I never quite finished it. Somewhere in my parents’ house, it’s probably packed up in a box; I’ve found the beginnings of other stories I don’t remember starting.
In middle school, I signed up for a journalism class. Typically shy, I stepped into a leadership role that included editing other students’ writing and determining the placement of articles in the school-wide newsletter that we published. I was excited and spent my afternoons after school trying to come up with the next great article. You see, certain aspects of writing, such as grammar and spelling, were fairly effortless for me. Generating creative, relevant, and/or thought-provoking ideas and then present them with a strong voice, however, continued to elude me. I don’t remember what the article I submitted was actually even about, but I remember the draft being returned to me covered in more red marks by the teacher than I’d ever seen before. I was crushed; I guess I just wasn’t made out for this writing thing, I told myself.
My creative writing (and pleasure reading, for that matter) also suffered in response to increased academic rigor as there just simply wasn’t the time that there used to be after all the school assignments were completed. Furthermore, I struggled to feel confident in my opinions about literature because I often didn’t see what the teacher wanted me to see or what the other students seemingly saw in the text.
When it came time to attend college and the pressure to declare a major set in, being a writer seemed as far-fetched as wanting to be a professional athlete or movie star, particularly given the fact that I had virtually given it up already based on my inaction; I enjoyed working with kids and that was a paycheck I could count on each month, especially when I decided, years later, to teach special education instead of English.
In college, I spent a semester as a liberal studies major in a program designed for candidates who wanted to earn their multiple subject teaching credential in four years before I realized that I neither wanted to teach elementary school nor did I want to spend the next four years of my life taking classes I had little to no interest in. Ultimately, I declared a psychology major with a minor in English with an emphasis on writing because those were the classes I found myself drawn toward and my funding was only available for four years and I would not have the time to complete a double major due to switching majors. Also, ever the pragmatist, I could still teach in the end, if I wanted to.
I took a literature class in drama as per required and at the very beginning of the course, the professor declared that The Lord of the Rings was, in fact, a gay love story and proceeded to share his evidence. Both as a writer and as a teacher, who sometimes--currently--teaches English, I’ve never forgotten the point of this demonstration: it isn’t about whether your claim is what everyone else believes or not already, but whether or not you can convince others to agree with you in the end. Creatively, though, I continued to struggle: I was told in a fiction writing class that a story I had submitted was unrealistic despite my protests that it was actually something that had happened and I received lackluster grades in film writing.
Over the years, I’ve periodically revitalized my dream of writing something that ultimately is published through online writing communities, but life will undoubtedly get in the way because, at the end of the day, I am a teacher, a wife, and a mother, and the writing gets put aside once more, despite the growth I see in my writing process as well as the writing itself and a few nagging ideas that are practically begging to be written.
I still struggle to call myself a writer, as opposed to a person who occasionally writes something coherent, because I am neither consistently engaged in the act nor have any completed works to present; it’s still just a pipe dream. That is, unless I finally put forth the effort, draw strength from the skills I’ve learned along the way, and just write, proving to myself I truly did my best and being the example of perseverance that I want to be for my daughter. And then figure out how one goes about getting something published. But one hurdle at a time, please.
As long as I can remember, with the exception of those couple of times I flippantly declared I wanted to be a nurse or a teacher as a young child who didn’t really understand what those jobs actually entailed, I wanted to be a writer. I was already a reader; I literally took a book with me everywhere I went. It was an ongoing joke in my house that I was so absorbed in a story that I would not respond to anything, including when my mother would yell, “Fire!” Still to this day, reading is a necessity to relax. I wanted to create that immersive experience for others.
In fourth grade, our school had a Young Author’s Fair. We wrote a rough draft of a story, which our teacher proofread for grammar and spelling mistakes, and were provided a blank hardcover book for our final draft with illustrations. The completed products would then be on display in the library as each class completed a walk through and pursued the literary options. I was so excited by the assignment that I went home and wrote the whole story in one evening.
Soon after, I started writing a novel at home about a pair of best friends whose relationship is challenged when one of the girls suddenly becomes popular. I worked on it for a long time, but I never quite finished it. Somewhere in my parents’ house, it’s probably packed up in a box; I’ve found the beginnings of other stories I don’t remember starting.
In middle school, I signed up for a journalism class. Typically shy, I stepped into a leadership role that included editing other students’ writing and determining the placement of articles in the school-wide newsletter that we published. I was excited and spent my afternoons after school trying to come up with the next great article. You see, certain aspects of writing, such as grammar and spelling, were fairly effortless for me. Generating creative, relevant, and/or thought-provoking ideas and then present them with a strong voice, however, continued to elude me. I don’t remember what the article I submitted was actually even about, but I remember the draft being returned to me covered in more red marks by the teacher than I’d ever seen before. I was crushed; I guess I just wasn’t made out for this writing thing, I told myself.
My creative writing (and pleasure reading, for that matter) also suffered in response to increased academic rigor as there just simply wasn’t the time that there used to be after all the school assignments were completed. Furthermore, I struggled to feel confident in my opinions about literature because I often didn’t see what the teacher wanted me to see or what the other students seemingly saw in the text.
When it came time to attend college and the pressure to declare a major set in, being a writer seemed as far-fetched as wanting to be a professional athlete or movie star, particularly given the fact that I had virtually given it up already based on my inaction; I enjoyed working with kids and that was a paycheck I could count on each month, especially when I decided, years later, to teach special education instead of English.
In college, I spent a semester as a liberal studies major in a program designed for candidates who wanted to earn their multiple subject teaching credential in four years before I realized that I neither wanted to teach elementary school nor did I want to spend the next four years of my life taking classes I had little to no interest in. Ultimately, I declared a psychology major with a minor in English with an emphasis on writing because those were the classes I found myself drawn toward and my funding was only available for four years and I would not have the time to complete a double major due to switching majors. Also, ever the pragmatist, I could still teach in the end, if I wanted to.
I took a literature class in drama as per required and at the very beginning of the course, the professor declared that The Lord of the Rings was, in fact, a gay love story and proceeded to share his evidence. Both as a writer and as a teacher, who sometimes--currently--teaches English, I’ve never forgotten the point of this demonstration: it isn’t about whether your claim is what everyone else believes or not already, but whether or not you can convince others to agree with you in the end. Creatively, though, I continued to struggle: I was told in a fiction writing class that a story I had submitted was unrealistic despite my protests that it was actually something that had happened and I received lackluster grades in film writing.
Over the years, I’ve periodically revitalized my dream of writing something that ultimately is published through online writing communities, but life will undoubtedly get in the way because, at the end of the day, I am a teacher, a wife, and a mother, and the writing gets put aside once more, despite the growth I see in my writing process as well as the writing itself and a few nagging ideas that are practically begging to be written.
I still struggle to call myself a writer, as opposed to a person who occasionally writes something coherent, because I am neither consistently engaged in the act nor have any completed works to present; it’s still just a pipe dream. That is, unless I finally put forth the effort, draw strength from the skills I’ve learned along the way, and just write, proving to myself I truly did my best and being the example of perseverance that I want to be for my daughter. And then figure out how one goes about getting something published. But one hurdle at a time, please.