How I Became a Writer Part 2- Learning to Write

One thing I'm learning to like about blogging is that it makes me think about things I hadn't thought of in maybe ever. Like learning to write.

First, the deep thought background. As a kid, I had a slight speech impediment, mainly with the letter "R." It came out as a "W" until into junior high. It made me not want to talk because I got made fun of and that sucked. Second, the thoughts in my brain and my ability to speak go in wildly different speeds most of the time. My brain is warp six and my mouth is not. Sometimes the words come out completely wrong, sometimes in the wrong order and sometimes in an undecipherable mess.

People who know me know that I have a hitch when I speak. I'll stand there and look at them for a moment and then try to speak. That's to let the words try to come out in a manageable fashion. If there's ever a movie about me, that will be a key part of making the character real.

So, put those together and it leads me to writing. I can write at my own pace and make the words come out the way I want them to. Well, most of the time.

In high school I learned to type- on an electric typewriter. It was perhaps the most useful high school class I took! I can't tell you the last time I tried to balance a chemical equation or do calculus, but I type literally every day. And honestly, I'm pretty good at it. When thoughts come I am able to spit them out onto the screen much more rapidly than I ever could by hand or possibly speaking them.

I had some good English teachers through school. One of the blessings of my school district, I guess. I never took it all that seriously, I thought, but now that I look back I have a pretty fair grasp of the English language.

One college course sticks out. It was on vocabulary building, primarily learning the Greek and Latin roots of words. Immensely helpful!

In the summer of 1991 I went off to graduate school. One of the first classes I took was called "Research Design and Writing." Basically, it's how to write a graduate thesis or alternate plan paper. Day One, my professor asks us to write 1-2 pages on what we thought we might want to research. I thought, "Hey, I'm a good writer, this will be easy." I wrote my page-and-a-half, turned it in and waited. I got it back covered in red ink (yes, I'm old enough to be fine with red ink comments on my work) and was shocked to see that he may have written more on those pages than I had. Once I got over the blow to my ego, I took advantage of the situation and learned to be a much better, tighter technical writer. Sadly, I never finished my thesis, but it was a good learning experience anyway.

Flash forward to 2016. I became agitated over health care in America. Basically, my thoughts came down to "Unless you're willing to look a parent in the eye and tell them that we weren't going to treat their child if they couldn't pay, then shut the hell up." And some other stuff was going on in America that was pretty challenging to me on both an emotional and practical level. The divisions in our country became distressing.

So one day, I'm working at the thrift store and I walk through our book processing area. It's hell for me because I get to see all kinds of books and want to buy far more than I could ever read. And there on the top of the pile is a book called "You Can Write a Novel." I saw that at a sign and invested my .27 (that's twenty seven cents with my discount!) just to see what it had to say. I got home and over the next month or so got a pretty good crash course.

I outlined my first book, "American Revolution 2056" and developed my characters on actual paper notecards (again, I'm old, get off me!) so I could get to work, which I did on January 26, 2017 AKA my birthday.