Soul Reasonings: On Writing...

Ok, so I'm splitting this one into 2 posts, cuz it's that long. I'll have the second part up tomorrow...

What makes someone pick up a pen and paper and begin lay their thoughts out in ink? What makes it so imperative that we get those thoughts out of our heads, and out into the open where anyone may see? What the hell is the inspiration behind these thoughts anyway, and what madness causes us to put them out there for anyone to see and critique? I can’t speak for anyone else, but the answer to the question is very simple for me. It is too complicated for me to simply say that writing allows me to vent in a way that nothing else does. It goes beyond that. It’s difficult to explain, but I will try.

When I was young I had an affinity for reading. While regular 4 and 5-year olds were running around raising all kinds of hell, I was the one always down in a book. Or at least that is what I was told. I do remember having a ridiculous collection of books on my bookshelf by the time I turned 7, and I remember having read the vast majority of them. And I’m not talking books of bedtime stories either. I had a children’s encyclopedia, “Tell Me Why”, “More Tell Me Why”, a children’s atlas, and a book of African folk tales, amongst the usual fare of the Enid Blyton, Famous Five, and the rest. In short, my imagination was never in danger of being starved. From primary school, I hated math, but I always showed a natural affiliation for creative writing. My essays were always near the top of the class, and I took a lot of pride in those accomplishments. This continued all the way through secondary school, until I hit form 5. And then I had the rug pulled out from under me.

When I hit form 5, I got assigned to a beast of a English teacher. For these purposes (cuz I don’t like speaking ill of the dead, and yes I heard he died some years ago), he shall be referred to as Mr. R. Anyway, Mr. R. was a very “by the book” English teacher. And I mean by the book. Your essay should have a clearly defined introduction; leading up to the body, and the conclusion should tie everything up neatly. Call it “writing by the numbers”. Anyway, needless to say, your stubborn and very naïve blogger decided that “writing by the numbers”, wasn’t for me. What the hell, I could write by the numbers in my sleep. So I went out and did my own thing, still based on the framework he gave us, but with my own structure. I wrote a complex story that started at the end, and then jumped back and showed how the protagonist ended up at that point. In retrospect, even though it was my best work up to that point (even other teachers I showed it to afterwards commended me on my creativity), I don’t know what the ass I thought was gonna happen. Well, he completely destroyed it. And I do mean completely. Actually, let me be specific, he destroyed my work, AND my confidence in my work with it.

It’s tough to grasp as a 15-year old what constructive criticism is, but you generally know it if you see/hear it. You may not like it, but at least you can live with it. I have yet to hear one piece of constructive criticism from that day. I remember being called a “fantasy writer” whose work was fit for a “bullshit Mills-and-Boon novel”. And that is an exact quote. (There was a romantic element in the story, but I really didn’t develop it. Come on. It was a 500-word essay for class). I was in shock. This wasn’t getting a boof in class, for doing an assignment wrong. This was pure vitriol being spewed. A liming pardner even asked if I did the man something. I poured over that story for days afterwards. And then, quite simply, I shut down. And by shutting down, I mean I stopped writing. Completely. You could quicker get me to write an expositive essay on the shittings, rather than write another story. (I think I also may have set a new school record for detentions received due to skipped homework assignments afterwards, but I don’t have the empirical evidence to back that up). But something else also happened. I stopped expressing myself.

Now, let it be known that I have never been the most talkative person about what’s going on in the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind. No-one is really, I think. But I raised it to an art form. You would quicker get a 10-minute diatribe on the merits and values of the “N” word, than hear me say one peep about how my day went. That’s just how I was. I simply did not like to talk about myself very much. The one place I could just let myself go was through my writing. It was my release. Though, I was ok-to-good in a lot of things, my writing was the one thing I believed I truly excelled at. So I used it as my voice. And then one day, I was told quite brutally, that the one thing I thought I was really, really good at, I really wasn’t shit at it. Actually, I was bullshit. If someone tells you the voice you use to let yourself be heard is no good, you tend to take that seriously. Especially, if it's someone in a position of authority. More so, if your pee has only been frothing for like the past 2-3 years...