Let's start at the very beginning:
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| A Very Good Place To Start |
Age:5, KindergartenI was writing well before I could write or read.
Montessori classrooms are busy but quiet. A hush falls over the room when the little bodies find focus, settling into important work. Alex sits tracing sand letters only half paying attention to the form because she is watching and waiting. Her crush is sitting at her favorite writing desk and she needs him to move. He's not even writing anyways, he is flipping through the pages of his copy book side-eyeing the kids at the counting beads. Alex finishes the alphabet and takes her time packing up the letters and rolling her rug. She walks slowly to put these items back in their spots then re-routes to the pencils shelf. The pencil shelf has its own smell, from the wooden pencil shavings and graphite mixing with the editing crayons despite each being sorted into coordinated cups. Alex stares at them with her hands behind her back she knows which pencil she is looking for, sleek dark blue, triangular, never too sharp, reliable erasure, and she isn't going to touch any of the lesser pencils. Besides, she has time; the counting beads are still in use so Connor is still sitting in her chair. She finds the pencil in the second cup, the wrong cup, mixed in with the right-handed-grip pencils. Alex claims her pencil and buys time by checking the sorting on the rest of the pencils so they are each in the proper containers. The kids at the counting beads are cleaning up, Connor is already out of his seat, Alex pulls her copybook from the pile on the bottom shelf and takes great satisfaction sitting down in her favorite spot. The desk is just the right height, the chair smooth old wood always warm even when she isn't taking it from her friends, and it is very nearly in the middle of everything situated just by the door, across from the math corner and adjacent to the science center. Energy buzzes in that seat. She sees everything. She hears everything. Alex puts her head down, chews on her tongue, and practices her letters on the lines. Every few lines her hand cramps. Instead of stopping she switches the pencil into her other hand. As she tires she switches the pencil more frequently, until almost every other letter is written by a different hand.
My first stories were written in a sketch book my grandmother gave me as a surprise gift. The cover is Picasso and the inside is filled with genius. Or scribbles, who can tell the difference?
By that age I was also already beginning to teach, groups of stuffed animals, the Barbies my aunts kept giving me, my friends and brother when I could cajole them into playing along.
I came by my callings early and honestly.
Composite, Grades 1/2In second grade, still before I could properly read, I finished my first fan-fiction of Lord of the Rings. My dad had starting reading The Hobbit to us as a bedtime story a couple of years earlier and didn't stop until he finished The Return of the King. I wanted more, so I made it. The love of the story was already there even if it was locked away in words I couldn't yet decode.
Alex is sick and tired of Bob books. She hates Mat and Cat and does not care where either of them sat. Worse when Alex emerges from the privacy of the reading corner Caitlin is sitting at the long table smugly reading Magic Tree House to the gecko. Notebook in hand she sits across from Caitlin. She opens her notebook and finds the spot where she left off, Lothlorien. She feels the crinkled pages, heavy with the indents of her writing and stares momentarily at the bookshelves towering behind Caitlin. Caitlin is still reading to the gecko, show off, the books in the backdrop amplify the taunting. It is so unfair that Caitlin can read all of those stories, surely far more interesting than Dot walking with Spot. Alex refocuses on the blank page in front of her and pulls the pencil out from behind her ear. She is in Lothlorien now, among the tall green trees, walking through silver fog. Galadriel is in the distance, chanting, her characters are trying to find Galadriel but are lost in the thickness of the forest. The fog is making then tired and they are hungry, Elrond didn't give them enough Lembas to last after they got lost in the mountains on their journey to the woods and they are running out of time. They need Galadriel's help. The page fills and Alex pauses just long enough to turn the the next one, her hand is grey with smears of graphite. Alex takes a deep breathe and hunkers down to continue the story. It is okay if she can't read any of the good books in the class she can write a better one.
It wouldn't be until mid-way through third grade that reading clicked for me. Harry Potter was the first book I read on my own, and I got to be the first in my class to read it (take that Caitlin). I would continue to spend the next many years writing Harry Potter fan-fictions and more or less being Hermione.
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| Image of floor to ceiling bookshelves tightly packed with many books lining a hardwood floor aisle that ends in another filled floor to ceiling bookshelf. |
Now, I am still reading and writing. I am currently trying to pick up this project and create a platform of sorts here to share my work from. For now this means I'm going to do my best to post something every week or so to build up some content before going out and seeking the readers. If you build it they will come, right? With that I'm focusing on revising a number of shorter pieces I've accumulated over the years as well as trying to write more short-stories and flash-fiction-prose. I'm also working on finishing up the novel I'm calling Slowdown Peter so I can dig into destroy-rebuild-rewrite-revise-and-polish it and the already-drafted novels in its series/universe (namely Earthside and Gina's Story). I just finished reading Douglas Adams So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. I am still in the middle of A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin with very little desire to pick it up and finish so I've also just started Cory Doctorow's Pirate Cinema.
