Writing
Personal Non-Fiction  Posted
Apr-24-2006
Digging Truthfully into Your
Life
In the third grade I had a teacher named Mrs. Super who
introduced me to two things in her classroom that went on to
become passions in my life: rock collecting and writing. At eight
years old I learned how to see the unusual characteristics in
ordinary stones and came to understand that writing was going
to be an important part of my life.
Mrs. Super's in-class rock collection fascinated me so much
that I immediately became a rock hound and started my own collection.
I loved rocks, but grew to love writing even more.
My favorite
memories of the third grade were about the creative
writing projects we did in Mrs. Super's class. Writing was
a chore for others, but it was a treat for me. Just hearing
the words "creative
writing time" was the
next best thing to going outside for recess. And as my passion
for digging up pretty stones grew, so did my
passion for excavating my own thoughts onto paper.
Mrs. Super helped me to win my first writing award. With
her encouragement I submitted a short essay
titled "My Mom and Me" to the school's Young
Author's contest and won second place in the third-grade category.
The essay was about a night out to the movies with my mother
to see Disney's Herbie
Goes Bananas. I still remember writing that essay.
I printed it as neatly as possible in pencil,
double-spaced on one sheet of lined notebook paper. I
re-wrote it once after Mrs. Super made a few gentle corrections
on my spelling. When my essay was chosen as
a winner, the school made a classy-looking cover for it out
of blue and white flowered wallpaper. I was then invited
to a special ceremony at the junior high school with all
of the other winners. What a delightful childhood memory!
I don't collect rocks anymore, but I continue to write. I
gravitate towards personal writing to chronicle my life
experiences, something I gift to myself and cherish
doing before the details of my life are smoothed over
with time. I use writing as a tool to process,
reflect, and remember. It's inner dialogue that bridges the
inside with the outside, the spiritual with the physical.
Barbara Abercrombie (WritingTime.net)
wrote a timely article on essays, memoir, and autobiography
writing that resonated with me. It's titled Getting
Personal: Digging Truthfully Into Your Own Life for Personal
Non-Fiction. You can read the entire
article at the link above, but here's
one paragraph that I especially enjoyed:
Getting personal on the page is different for every
writer. My students ask for rules about this and I say
there are no rules — except for your own. The pen
is mightier than the sword, and I believe that writers,
good ones, stab hypocrisy, lies, and bad behavior with
their writing, not the egos of those closest to them. When
you write deeply and honestly about most people, you see
both sides of their behavior, and a good writer reveals
not only the truth, but also a generosity toward others.
Mrs. Super not only had an extraordinary name, but in
my eyes was also an extraordinary teacher. When you're eight
years old you don't think about life like you do when you're
in your 30s. You don't realize when seeds are being planted
in you by wise people who recognize your vast potential. And
you don't always know enough to say thank you to gifts that
are destined to be opened up in retrospect many years later — after
the seeds have been mixed with the right kind mature soil.
I will never
forget Mrs. Super's influence on my young life, and
will always credit her for my love of rocks
and for the first layer of confidence in my writing ability.
Whenever I stop to reflect on the beauty in an ordinary stone,
I will remember the beauty Mrs. Super saw in me. •
© 2006 Chris Dunmire www.chrisdunmire.com.
All rights reserved. |
