One of my favorite parts of being a fiction teacher comes in the beginning of the first class, when every student goes around and talks about what drew him or her into writing. I’m always struck by how early the desire to be a writer starts. I love children of all ages but for the past several years as a Clark County READS volunteer, I have requested to work with children in the third grade, age 8, when children begin to be interested in things and people outside of their home. They become bold and are willing to try something new. They can also become dramatic and lose themselves playing a character.
Almost everyone remembers feeling different from other kids, feeling as though they saw the world in a different way from everyone else, and I’m no exception.
I was a bright, aware, zany, sometimes quiet or talkative, very sensitive, dreamy child, always imagining myself somewhere else. It didn’t help that the kids in school called me Snow White. Although I lived in the suburbs, I often imagined that a King and Queen would burst into my classroom and tell me that they were taking me back to the Kingdom, where it would be announced that I was their secret long-lost but never forgotten child. And although I was close to my parents, more so my father, I would have to choose whom to live with; royals or commoners (I might have been read too many fairy tales.) Although I’m an Angelino, I often imagined myself in New York, in the middle of Eloise at the Plaza. In this rendition, my brothers nor my parents would be around. My Godmother would be the Nanny, my cat would be Weenie, and I had the freedom to roam in search of adventure.
My books were my treasures. I read constantly. Often I walked to the library, reading a book as I went, tripping over curbs. At one point I decided to read the entire fiction section at the Public Library, but I didn’t get too far with that. All I succeeded in doing was accumulating a very long list.
There was not a lot happening in the suburban Los Angeles of my childhood, or so it appeared to me then. Later, of course, I realized that there were whole veins of drama to mine. But the great excitement in my life came when my Uncle and Aunt invited me to visit them in San Francisco. They were Yoga devotees and I was taken to an Ashram. It was summer and it was a magical experience. There was adventure everywhere. Once back at their home, there were astrologers in their living room and Yogis chanting while incense burned and bodies contorted in various positions. Tarot cards placed before me predicting my fortune. Although I am an honest person, I’ve always had a fondness for scoundrels–they tell such great stories.
I wish I could have been a writer when at school. I was good at writing up science experiments. As that was something I had just done and it was just putting down the facts.
ReplyDeleteI was a prolific reader as youngster, cowboy and war stories mostly. I was never an Enid Blyton fan. That came when I read to my children.
Dennis Wheatly was a great favoutite when I was older.
I would really disappear into the hero or character, Even in Watership Down and the Duncton wood stories.
It is now in later life I find I can write. Maybe just the painting we'd all love to paint. We would be the only ones to see it.