The Right to Write (Imperfectly)

This morning I was eating my cinnamon-raisin english muffin and drinking my chai tea and reflecting on how writing these blog posts is the first time in about 16 years that I have written for fun.

As a kid I loved to read and would lie in bed with a flashlight and a book under the covers. I would ride my bike to the library and check out ten books and do it all again a week later. I was on a first name basis with the librarians.

Some kids idolize actors. Not me, I idolized authors and would devour books almost as much as the marshmallow creme my mom kept tucked away in the cabinet. In 6th grade I began to write short stories for my class and my teacher would say, “I like what you are writing. Keep it up!”

In community college I began taking journalism classes. My teacher was an ex-editor from the Chicago Tribune and she would assign weekly stories for us to write for homework. I would interview the various people in my life and write stories about them and turn them in on Monday. She began reading my stories each week to the class. My face would go red and I would pray she wouldn’t announce that I was the author. (She must have noticed my discomfort because she never did.)

One day she asked me to stay after class. She asked me if I was interested in transferring to a university where I could major in journalism and if so, she would help me do that. I said yes.

A few weeks later, a major family emergency happened and I had to drop out of school during finals week. When I went back to school a couple of semesters later she was gone. I was so disappointed.

I didn’t write again for a couple of years.

When I was in my early 20’s I began writing short stories about my life: making sense of the challenges, writing about my cat, friends and family. My friends loved reading my stories.

There was a really crabby older African American woman who lived in my apartment building. She hated me. She would scowl at me for anything and for nothing. I can see now that she was probably really depressed living with a bunch of twenty-somethings but I couldn’t see that then. Her hatred of me hurt; it cut to the very core of me.

I would type my stories in my window of my studio apartment, happy as a clam.

She would walk by my apartment and scowl at me.

One day she stopped in front of my open window and said, “What are you doing?”

“I’m writing short stories.”

This was already the longest conversation we’d ever had. I was partially ready to close my shades and partially ready to buy a lottery ticket as this was obviously my lucky day.

“Well, I’d like to read them.”

Wow.

“Okay.”

I gathered some of my short stories that I’d carefully typed out and put them in a folder and handed them to her through the window.

She came back in 2 hours with my folder and left it outside my door with a quick knock. And then she was gone.

I opened up the folder.

She’d used a red pen to ‘correct’ my writing. Story after meticulously-written story was bloodied by her pen.

Ugggggh…I felt sick. I beat my pillow and yelled into it: ‘YOU B***H!”

And I didn’t write for fun again.

Until this blog.