I write all the time, every day. Sometimes my writing is work-related: reports, emails, marking comments, lesson plans, models for student work. Often it is for pleasure. But my memories of actually learning the complex skill of writing are vague.
I don't know if this is a real memory or one of those stories that is passed down in family folklore and becomes, by default, a memory. On my very first day at school, aged three, I wrote my name on a drawing I had done. The nuns, (for it was a Catholic school) were in raptures, amazed that I was capable of such a thing. I didn't really understand what all the fuss was about; I had been writing my name for a while. But they insisted on giving me a small cuddly toy in recognition of this 'feat', and my mother glowed with pride when she came to collect me. There indeed was an early confirmation of the transforming power of the written word.
I wrote a story called 'The School Caretaker' when I was about five. The narrative was simple: I wrote in the first person as the caretaker and described incredibly mundane tasks that I performed through the day - like changing a lightbulb and sweeping up in the locker area. Again, my teachers enthused. My grandmother kept the little exercise book in which the story was written until the day she died. There was further validation of how powerful writing could be in the reactions of the adults around me.
I recall gaining the final credit I needed for a Headteacher's Award for an essay on Maximilian Kolbe, and then a second one for an argumentative piece on the channel tunnel (before it had been built). In the final year of middle school I won the History Prize for my 100-page project on the history of my local village. I'd presented it chronologically, showing how it had grown from its first entry in the 1341 census, moving right towards the present day and including taped interviews with elderly residents who had talked about their own memories of the place changing. The prize was a book token, and I chose a book on British wildlife that I still have today.
So those amount to my early writing triumphs. If there were public disasters, I have blotted them out. I was a furious diary writer from my early teens to my early twenties and I would have been mortified had anyone found and read those entries, so personal were they. I no longer keep a journal but I do have a notebook that I am often scribbling in, though with nothing as formal as diary entires. And I have always written poetry, sporadically at times, but it is always there in the background. I am also, in spite of this digital age, an avid letter-writer. Nothing beats a hand-written letter. Nothing shows quite how much you care for the recipient. I have had pen-pals since school-days, and sustained a teenage romance by weekly letters when the object of my desire was at boarding school in Wales. These have bee replaced now by friends in far-flung corners of the earth. Most of them in parts of Australia, where I was lucky enough to teach for a year, and tempting though it is to use email to keep in touch, I try as far as possible to
write letters.
I have had many fountain pens over the years. I prefer to write in real ink, but I don't have a special affinity with one particular writing implement. I just replace my Parker every few years as it goes missing at school or starts to leak. If I'm working on something creative my favourite place to go is a local cafe, sitting near the window. Well, it worked for J K Rowling, so who knows?
So, there you have it: some of my earliest memories to my current practices, and the kinds of writing that have played the most important part in my life. How do you recall your own writing history?
