Next week I start a new adventure. I'll be teaching a writing class for Seniors who want to write about some of their most memorable experiences. "Writing from Memory" will be offered at my local community center and is open to people 60 years of age or older. I decided to offer this class because in recent years I've met a number of older folks in my neighborhood and this idea has always been met with a positive response. Aside fro teaching some writing skills and providing a platform for reading and getting feedback to their work, my main goal for this small group of "students" I will have is to simply have fun.
One of the introductory activities in this class will be to write a personal writing history. This will serve to introduce us to each other and inform me and my students what experiences, issues, skills, and expectations are in our little group. Like everything else, I will complete each task and prompt with everyone. Heresy personal writing history.
One afternoon, from the 4-year-old days of my like I wanted to impress my mother. I scanned a comic book I had for just the right word. Though I couldn't read yet, I could spell a few fords, most notably M I L K and M O T H E R. I figured to be a writer I needed to put words together so I was looking for a word to copy next to a word I already knew. It was a cowboy comic book with colorful panels and lots of action that I perused. The notion that if I put a new word with one I already knew would be enough to call myself a writer.
To call myself a writer, this Western comic book, full of cowboys and cattle rustlers, good guys with white hats, and bad guys with black hats and 5 o'clock shadows, would provide just what I needed.
About 4 pages in the first story, there it was, a beauty, Only 4 letters long, it had a nice symmetry to it. I could handle this one. For the next 10 minutes, I dutifully copied my new word next to one I already knew. Having written MOTHER as neatly as I could, I decided the new word belonged right in front of it. So there it was, ready to be seen by my mom. I had written my first full sentence.
My mom skillfully controlled her reaction. "What's this," she smirked, half smiling, half suppressing a cautious laugh. I had presented her with the sentence: DEAD MOTHER. That was my beginning as a writer.
Fortunately things improved from that rocky start. Throughout elementary and middle school, my mom was there to critique my written assignments and somberly academic writing. My dad helped too. They continued to inspire and inform my work through high school. By my first year in college my mom became critically ill, and by the end of that year, she died. My attention turned to writing poetry along with the academic writing that increased exponentially. School essays for my mind, poems for my soul.
Because of the volume and content of reading I did as a college student, my writing really blossomed. The voice that was always there found new life in essays, poems, and even a one act play. I learned to defend my claims in Blue Books on 3-hour finals and to research and illustrate papers on everything from the blues as historical evidence to construct validity in sociological studies.
After college I continued to write poetry, but this time mixed my poems with watercolor paintings influenced by the work of Kenneth Patchen and Paul Klee. When I revisit some of that work, I realize that I really have been an eyewitness to history and cultural change.
Throughout the 1970s I wrote curriculum with a talented group of educators that became lifelong friends. But teaching was never enough, so I explored other interests and that led to a side career as a working journalist. Serving as N. California correspondent for the two different Thoroughbred horse magazines, I wrote personality profiles, covered big races, and editorials. Occasionally, I'd meet fairly famous people who inhabited this fascinating sub-culture. I even got to cover the Kentucky Derby. It was all I expected and more, Truly, a once in a lifetime experience.
While teaching writing, I continued to develop as a writer. Being part on an on site research collaborative, I wrote pieces about everything from student motivation to the interpretation the dreams of teachers. With each year comes new stories, novels, poetry and creative non-fiction. The writers of recent years continue to influence me just as much as the writers of decades past. I particularly admire the work of Toni Morrison, and the brilliant nonfiction work of John Krakauer.
With retirement came more opportunity to read and write for myself. I co-founded The Gutter, a writing group in Portland, Oregon and was an active member for over 6 years. Occasionally I have been asked to participate in public readings mostly at local bookstores. More recently, I stated a local discussion group on Sun Magazine. The Reader's Write section always inspires and motivates new pieces. I'vebeen lucky to have two such responses to their prompts published.
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