My Thoughts On Writing

My Thoughts on Writing

Why did I become a writer? I needed to express myself, so writing was my way of working through my problems. Shyness prevented me from speaking up which, in turn, made me mumble a lot. When asked to speak up in a loud voice, it frightened me to do so— This is how writing became my outlet.

When I turned six, I went to a school in a rural area. This was a scary experience for me to overcome, because there were grades one through eight all grouped together. Each grade took their turn going up to the front of the room where our teacher would go over their lesson for the day.

On my first day, seeing all the older kids, I hid in the back of the room sectioned off as the library. My teacher had to look for  me when it was my turn to go up front for my lesson, but, as each day passed, it became easier. I made a new friend, Patti, who liked the same things I liked, which impressed me! She helped me overcome my shyness, and from then on, school became fun for me. I even excelled at reading, spelling and writing, which pleased my mother.

Patti and I would sit during break just writing or copying off our books to improve our handwriting which later progressed into writing our own stories, sometimes together or separately. We were competitive, but we stayed friends.

Our teacher, Mrs. Bredlow, would have to shoo us out the door saying, “I love your diligence, girls, but you both need to get some fresh air.”

Well, our diligence paid off, because my handwriting improved, as did Patti’s. Mrs. Bredlow was proud of what we accomplished, and chose our papers to enter into the county fair exhibits. We both won blue ribbons for our beautiful penmanship and for our original stories. This made us feel very proud.

So, as soon as I could read and write, writing down my thoughts became my outlet to all problems that I encountered growing up. I did this every night, before bedtime, which relaxed me, and kept me focused on things I wanted to accomplish. What can I say, I was very organized for someone so young.

As I progressed throughout my elementary school years, my passion became my writing. My favorite subject was English. Why? Because I got to write stories or essays. I listened and learned everything there was to know about writing great papers. My other subjects I liked were science and history, because we would write on points of interest our teachers touched on.

I remembered Science class where we learned about the planets, and I wrote on my favorite, Jupiter. Our teacher would teach us about the different species of insects, interesting plant life that grew in different areas around our state, reptiles, along with frogs. The best part of it all, we got to go on field trips and wrote on what we saw or liked best.

In history, we were assigned famous people to write about. Of course, we learned about the wars and why we fought them, and answer the questions at the end of each chapter. Instead of answering them individually, our history teacher wanted the questions summarized which was harder, so more thought went into it. At the time I didn't like it, but I know now this was really a good writing exercise. Our teacher wanted us challenged, so we really had to think things through. My love of writing got me through these classes, or I would have failed Science and History. I learned a lot during this time, and will forever be grateful to these wonderful teachers who challenged their students to think things through.

When I entered high school, I was known to be a nerd, but so were my friends, Audrey, Delores, Patricia, and Carol, who I hung around with. We devoted most of our free time to studying, debating different topics, and reading lots of library books for fun— All of us liked learning new things.

In my freshman year of high school, I started to write stories for the children I babysat which I read to them. They were my toughest critics, but when they found them interesting, it thrilled me. I would ask them what they wanted me to write about, and I would write on their topic. They were thrilled to find their ideas on paper, so I kept asking and writing  on them.

Eventually, when I had children of my own, I wrote stories for them. Cute little stories that made them laugh. Of course, they still had their store-bought books to look at, but I would write them their bedtime stories. They loved it when I wrote them into the story as the main character.

The only time I branched out into other genres was when I joined WDC. I read the material other authors posted, and I thought to myself, I can do this; so, that is exactly what I did. I love WDC! It has expanded my horizons, so to speak, I feel more involved with my writing, and I'm happy with what I have accomplished so far.