Born With a Gift
At a young age, I was good at putting thoughts to paper in short story form, but my spelling and grammar were horrible. The fear of misspelling words and not writing to the grade school syntax standard held me back from exploring and documenting stories. However, my imagination grew, and I was no longer able to keep my thoughts to myself and that is when I wrote my first story Adventures in the Coyote Field. I submitted it to my primary school teacher, the story was only about four pages long, but my teacher loved it. When I got it back from her, I read her comment about how amazing and detailed my story was, I was ecstatic. Those emotions quickly faded away when I saw the dreadful red ink that riddled my literary work. I didn’t know what to think. I honestly felt like throwing the paper in the trash bin, but the teacher told me she would assign a student to me to help me rewrite my story. Kids will be kids; we sat in the back of the classroom and didn’t really work on my story. Before we got pass the first paragraph, we started chatting about anything non-school related and, now that I think about it, I don’t remember the teacher checking in on us or resubmitting my story.
As years passed, my attention to detail began to overshadow my deficiencies but that was not always a good thing. I remember in middle school; I was tasked to summarize Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe. The story simmered and then stained my mind to the point I couldn’t write it any other way than what I saw in my mind. I vividly explained a portion of the short story for my summary but was penalized because my summary was too similar to the original story. My teacher borderline accused me of plagiarizing. We had listened to the audio book as a class and then wrote the summary after, so I didn’t understand how I could have plagiarized when I wrote what I envisioned in my mind while listening to the audio book. I understand how the teacher could have been frustrated because I was supposed to summarize but I was captivated by the details. IN that moment I felt like walking out of the classroom because I knew she wouldn’t guide me the way I needed.
I say all that to say this, if you come across a young potential author, try to find ways to encourage and look at the positive parts of their writing. Moreover, if you see failings in their written work, coach them to be better and draw out more of their talent. I was a child when I started writing but I never had anyone encourage me to be a writer until I started writing as an adult. My parents didn’t know I loved writing because I never told them. I felt like school and home life were supposed to be kept separate, I don’t know why. But imagine if that first teacher I shared a story with sat down with me herself and molded me. Stories like Murder justified could have been published long ago.
Lastly, we all must help the next generation discover their gift and encourage them to use it to the best of their ability. Our gifts are destined to serve one another.
