To Write or not to Write?

To write or not to write, that is the question.

I won’t grow up, I don’t want to go to school. Just to learn to be a parrot, And recite a silly rule.

When I was younger, by a lot, I wanted to be a writer. I remember wanting to write from as early as first grade. Everything else was peripheral. Yes, I played sports and I learned other stuff in school, but I loved to write. 

For mother’s day, I wrote a poem to my mother… “There will never be another of my sweet mother. I love her night and day. And even when I’m far away.” I’m not sure how young I was when I wrote that, but judging from the handwriting, I’d have to think about 6 years old. 

As I grew older and more things were introduced to me I got involved in other school subjects, but deep down I still loved to write. 

In Junior High School, I distinctly remember writing stories based on the book series, Tom Corbett Space Cadet, where I became the main character and other students in my class took on the roles of other characters in the series. Alas, once I shared this piece of writing with my English teacher it was never returned, so there are no copies left. 

A similar thing occurred in High School when I rewrote the story Treasure Island from the point of view of being there myself. In fact, it was due to my expertise that Jim Hawkins did all the things he was supposed to do. But that too is lost to what I’m going to assume was the teacher’s love of the story, and is archived somewhere in her basement as I have done to some of my students’ written work.

In my late high school years and college, writing became a therapy tool, whereby if something was bothering me, it would become a piece of semi-fictional writing. This was the case with, “What would happen if my father became president,” which my father loved, but the rest of the family, who understood that I was making fun of him, hated. I also wrote a piece about the place that I was working at, and what kind of things I could have done to disrupt their operation. Luckily I was the only one who ever read it. The therapy worked and I got rid of a lot of frustration. 

After college as a teacher, I kept journals of every year I taught, focusing on expectations, goals, and anxieties. Re-reading some of them, now that I’m retired, makes me understand how naive I was back then, and also reminds me of all the things I accomplished. 

In retirement now and being a storyteller has opened up new avenues for my writing. For now, I write everything and anything I want. Having prompts like this one help. Doing the A to Z blog challenge every April where I have to publish a piece of writing every day (except Sundays) also tests my ability to create. I love it. 

And though I have grown up, that little child in me that wanted to share his writing with others has not. And I’m thankful for it.