Me as a Writer! A Case-Study!

As a young boy beginning fourth grade, we were required to copy already-written paragraphs on to another paper containing a picture of an Idaho history pastime. At the time I was a terribly distracted child who had no desire for writing in the slightest. I would end up getting distracted because I didn’t want to write, but it still had to be done. Just about every time, I was the one who had to stay in from recess because I had not finished my paper. As a young child this was the worst possible punishment in the history of punishments. I liked my recess. It was my moment of freedom from containment. I began to associate writing with the lack of fun.


Round about the seventh grade when we started keeping journals, I found that I somewhat enjoyed writing as long as it was something that I wanted to write about. This led to my writing all over the place! Including walls! (just kidding…..) I asked my mother for a journal that I could write in myself.(Unfortunately I didn’t write in it much though because I didn’t have the patience.)

Since I started writing all the time I started getting better at writing, at least I think. I also started reading a lot and I think I may have been copying their writing style…….I should test myself on that sometime and see if I write like myself and not someone else. Although I’m not sure that I will be able to tell the difference between myself and someone else if my writing is just like theirs because I’ll have no identity and won’t even know if I exist!………………..Anyway…..as I have just demonstrated, I tend to puke whatever I’m thinking on to the page and then go back and fix it, but I won’t fix that because I just used it as a transitional tool……! I write what I think so that’s what goes on the paper.

In case you’re wondering, yes, that has got me into trouble on occasion. In an English journal, I had basically once said that I didn’t like my English teacher’s teaching style. We began to share so I shared mine. As I continued reading I got to the rude spot and my teacher kind of gave me a surprised look because we were kind of…not.. enemies. I didn’t really have anyway of explaining except that I didn’t mean for it to come out so insultingly. I don’t think he really liked me much after that. Although it was through him that I developed my love of reading. I really enjoyed, and was proud of the thought that I liked to read and write. So I began saying to myself that I was going to write a book one day. Skepticism galore from many. I often made movie watchers the enemies of book lovers but I knew that I really liked movies too, sometimes more than books. So to be honest with myself, I realized it wasn’t the books or the writing that I loved it was the stories. Now I have this amazing, fantastic story in my head that all I have left to do is write it down. Except the one problem of finding a beginning..............! =)