Me, the writer

This the story of a developing writer I refer to as me.

In kindergarten and first grade, my school had a book binding program which spurred the story teller in me to write dozens of little stories for novelty of having them published alone. I can only remember one of those stories, in which I teach my younger sister, who in the story is afraid, how to run. In second grade, I had a poem published in one of those anthologies that publish kids' poems to get parents to buy the publication. I remember reading every poem in the book and only finding two or three I thought were as good as mine. In third grade, I wrote poems that first resulted in my teacher's accusation that I was a budding plagiarist but eventually lead to her admiration. She was really into Christmas-- we had a 12 ft tree in the classroom, and she kept the poem I wrote about it. She had me read it to the class and when, at the end they sat there in silence, she exclaimedd it was the silence of admiration. I half believed her but vowed never to share my poetry with my peers again.

My grandfather visited from Bangladesh when I was in third grade. My grandfather was a lawyer and is gifted, as good lawyers are, with his words. He had a special gift for story telling and has always taken his time to tell me stories he's read. He told me stories from 1001 Nights, Shakespeare, and the Quran, among others. This influenced me greatly as both an aficionado of stories and as a writer. 

In fourth grade, perhaps in an effort to show off to my classmates in a way they could more easily appreciate, I switched to mainly academic writing. I wrote academically with ease and can only remember having a problem with it in ninth grade, which I attributed to my teacher's insanity. However, I later realized that my ninth grade English teacher had taught me deeper literary analysis than I'd ever experienced before and was just having trouble fitting my newly complicated thoughts into the old 3-5 paragraph essay format. I got that figured out pretty soon, though and could bang out a 5 paragraph essays in 45 mins from only having read the book/story/poem/play by my senior year. Regents preparation had given me the formula to do that and SAT essay practice had given me a vocabulary so sharp it impressed even very well-read teachers.

Writing continued to be easy for me until my first semester as an English major and second semester as a writing tutor. I began to struggle with it because I began to lose touch with the formula I had come to depend on. I saw too many possibilities and didn't know how to choose from among them the one best suited to my purpose. I don't know how my fellow tutors dealt with the exposure to such a wide array of equally viable writing styles.

Meanwhile, I was taking increasingly difficult and more writing intensive classes. I needed time to figure it out. I needed time to write papers 30 different ways or at least think through 30 different ways to approach my argumentation. I didn't have that kind of time and I sort of floundered. In fact, I regressed. In my need for experimentation, I ditched half my vocabulary and dipped from near eloquence to an incoherent mess. It didn't help that I was studying post-colonial and vernacular literature as an American immigrant minority from a previously colonized country. It doesn't help that I was unable to verbalize my thoughts and feelings to the people I thought I loved and trusted for fear of their utter disappointment. In fact, my writing was only clear when I clearly understood my own identity, which was rare. Such radical introspection doesn't always make for good grades, especially when you're struggling with the conventions that earn you your grades. It was, as they say, a recipe for disaster.

I promised I'm not saying this to create an infinite loop, but the story continues from the beginning of this blog.