WRITING

I think I’ll reveal to you something I don’t think I ever told anyone. As a child I always wanted to write short stories. In class when we read aloud what we had written, the other kids always said mine were the best. I usually put in that extra twist.  You’ve probably noticed I’m still doing it.

For years I always gravitated to short stories in magazines and to books of short stories.  As I got older I decided to educate myself and started to read through Dickens.  After a couple of his books I became depressed with his writing. My life was depressing enough without adding more to it so I stopped and ended up reading modern novels.

My mother loved to read and she would get books from a rental library at a low daily cost.  After she finished them, I read them very quickly because every day cost money. That may be the reason I became a speed reader.

In high school I couldn’t understand kids who hated to read and complained about having to write a book report. English was always my best subject and I got A’s on my report card.  When I was a junior, my teacher asked why my name wasn’t on the honor roll and I told her it was because she was the only one to give me an A.  After that I never got another A even though I was the best student in her class.

For years I would wake in the middle of the night and compose in my mind what I would like to say about something that was bothering me. I came to realize the early hours were the best time for me to use that creative side of my brain.  But it would take awhile before I would put anything in writing and a lot of my ideas I just left slide. I finally answered a call that came in the middle of the night and told myself I would write about my thoughts the next day. That’s when I wrote “Sleigh Ride”.

As a result my son gave me this “blog” and I now have the opportunity to do something I never thought possible and that’s the ability to say something and have people pay attention.  He may have created a monster but I thank him from the bottom of my heart.