Day 10: Writing about writing

* Today's task is to write about writing.

Before I started school, one of my favorite past times was dictating letters and stories to my mom as she sat in front of our typewriter. My stories made music, and it thrilled me. I skipped around the dining room table in circles while she clicked the keys. It seemed to me that learning the alphabet was going to be the key to my success because I wasn't going to have to rely on anyone else to get my stories into the world.

In kindergarten, I'd ask Mrs. Callahan, my teacher, quite regularly when she thought all of her students would have the letters figured out enough to write stories. And once we could actually start writing our own stories fairly independently in first and second grade, there was a steady stream of Elissa literature to share with my peers. It delighted me to read my stories aloud and see the reactions from my classmates. If I could score a laugh from the classroom, I felt that I had made it!

As I got older, writing became an outlet for my emotions. I found that I could process my feelings better when I had a second to sit down and write. I often wrote before bed: letters, song lyrics, poetry, stories, and journal entries. The world was easier for me to handle it if I could dissect it with a pen on a piece of paper. Academically, I relied on writing to be a successful student. If the teacher gave us an option for an essay test or a multiple-choice test, I would passionately argue for the essay test. I knew that I could write in a charming enough voice to do fairly well on essay tests, and I was usually right.

In high school and college, I joined the newspaper, and it was through the newspaper that I learned about the magic of revision with Professor Bruce Clary. Bruce Clary read my writing and wrote lengthy marginal notes and insightful end comments. He demanded the best from me and made my paper bleed when he didn't get my best. He also sat with me in his office and explained why I needed to revise my work. From Bruce, I learned that my best writing could not be spit out effortlessly, and I also learned to appreciate good reading. Suddenly, I wanted to read the classics because there could be something there for my writing life within their pages, and I finally felt ashamed for opting for the Cliff's Notes a few times during AP English senior year.

Once I became a teacher myself, my writing seemed to slip through my fingers. Sure, I drafted a student sample or modeled the writing process as I often as I could to give my students a vision of the target they should have in their scopes. However, it became more and more difficult for me to sit down and write for my own wellbeing, and writing became much more tedious as I tried to elevate my final product. This fall, I started getting itchy to write again. The stories seem to have dried up, but I'm hoping that if I develop the practice, eventually a wellspring of stories will start gushing forth from my fingertips. For now, I will say that writing is an old friend, one I've missed, and though we don't fit together as easily as we once did, I'm confident there is hope for us! Here's to 21 days of the challenge being left! I'm still hoping that at the end of this challenge, I'll have a character in mind who can take me through an actual story, one I can feel proud to have written.