History of Writing...My writing that is.

The 4th grade writing test is upon us. In North Carolina, that will be Tuesday of next week. We’ve been working intensely with our kids, practicing the skills they weren’t born with but have been taught ever since they began kindergarten.

When I think about the writing I was exposed to as a child, and the writing we are teaching in the classroom, I am in conflict. Maybe it’s because I always enjoyed writing, long before I even knew how to do it well.

My first experiences with writing came about when I was a young child. I don’t remember writing much, or even thinking about writing, before I started school. I do remember watching my mother write letters at the kitchen table ( in the 1950's). My father, her husband, was an Air Force man, and from the time I was a toddler, he was in the military. Often he would be far away from us, and I would watch my mother write letters to him, or read the ones he wrote to her.

Later, when I was in grade school, I watched my mother write to her sister, my Aunt Del. I remember one day, I wanted to write a letter too. The flowing marks she made on the paper with her pen fascinated me, and I remember trying to read them. They looked nothing like the letters I was learning to write in first grade. I wanted to write like that one day!

Another time I remember thinking about writing was when I wanted to write to my aunt again. By then I was able to write the letter myself. I wanted to address the envelope myself, for this letter was going to my aunt directly from me. I asked my mom for the address, and she told me. There was the word “apartment number”, and as I was scribing what she dictated, I remember trying to spell that word, and the only word I could relate to that sounded like apartment was department. So I put on her mailing address, “Mrs. ……., 5555 whatever blvd, department #5, etc, etc.” Fortunately, my mother proofread the envelope for me and corrected my error, explaining the difference between apartment and department.

One Christmas, I asked for a typewriter. We were living in Manchester, New Hampshire, and I was in 3rd -4th grades. I wanted a typewriter to make my writing look neater. My parents were great! They gave me a child’s typewriter. It had a ribbon that could print red or black. It didn’t take long for me to realize that the typewriter would not always type what I wrote, and the ribbon quickly ran out. To re-use the ribbon, I had to remove the spool, rewind it, then snap it back into place. My fingers would be black by the time I was ready to type some more.

In Junior High, I discovered journal writing, and found that it was one of the easiest things I’d ever been told to do. If I were a fourth grader today, I’d have those writing prompts beat… give me a prompt, and I would write as much as I knew about it, or as much as I could make up about it. And I didn’t mind rewriting or revising.

In 10th grade my best friend Vonnie and I made productive use of our weekends and summers, even after school time, making up stories based on our favorite TV shows. I remember my most favorite TV show (from 1969-70) was Lancer, a western about a rancher and his two sons, each born of a different woman (mother of #1 son died, father remarried, mother of #2 son died). We wrote serious stories, as well as ridiculously funny stories making fun of the characters, or exaggerating their qualities. My friend, Vonnie, was a far better writer than I, though. She invented new characters to enhance the stories and complement the already established ones. I wish I had kept those stories… we laughed and pondered over many of our scripts, taking our writing very seriously.

When I was a high school senior, Vonnie had gone on to college, and was dating by then. I turned to another friend who loved to write poetry. She introduced me to the music of Carol King, and the Tapestry album, and I fell in love with her love songs. Debbie and I wrote poems and shared them with each other. My poems were usually silly, like the one I wrote about the frog we named Jeremiah who frequently showed up on her front steps as we talked late into the summer nights, or dramatic like the one I wrote about Napoleon as he pondered his fate on St. Helena. Her poems were about falling in love with a “bad” boy, and the agony of not being able to tell anyone (she told me though!).

In college, I learned to write essays about famous artists or periods of art for art history class, and advertisements for the advertising class. Journaling continued to be my preferred form of writing all through college. That and letter writing.

It seems I haven’t changed much since then!

I'm curious about others. What have your writing experiences been like? Have you ever written a piece that was published? Do you secretly write poetry? Do you have a book on the back burner? I'd love to know....

I'm thinking journalers in JLand don't do anything secretly! I also think most journalers have loved writing ever since they were kids. Am I write?  <grin>