How a Teacher Reminded Me Why I’m a Writer

Friday, November 14th, 2008 | Runoff

On Halloween, my brother and I, in company with my wife and a couple other friends, visited an English teacher we had both had in high school. I took her English class my junior year, and then the next year, I took her creative writing and world mythology class. I came to that class hungry and didn’t leave disappointed. Denise was the advisor of the school literary magazine, and I contributed stories, poetry, and art, as well as serving on the selection and editorial board for the collection.

I hadn’t seen Denise in nearly ten years, though we had emailed a little. She asked us about what is going on, and I told her that I document software for the Church. Denise asked if I enjoy it, and I said yes, and they keep me busy.

She replied knowingly, “Yeah, but technical writing…”

Her response was interesting. Even after nearly a decade, she knew that tech comm hadn’t changed my ultimate career goal. Long before my senior year in high school, I had decided on a career in creative writing. That year, Denise recognized that I wasn’t there for an easy “A,” for a social hour, or to wind down in the final period of the day. I was there because I was interested in the class. She gave me encouragement then, and after all this time, she’s still convinced that I’m cut out for what I’ve wanted to do since the eighth grade.

Eighth grade. Not your typical turning point. But about that time, for an English class assignment, I wrote a story about going back in time and being in Abraham Lincoln’s balcony when John Wilkes Booth assassinated him and escaped. For some reason, writing that story woke something up. I also read Terry Brooks’s The Sword of Shannara. I thought to myself, “I could do this.” A bit presumptuous, yes, but when you form your dreams while you’re naive, you plow ahead with no reservations. Ever since then, stories and narrative have resonated with me.

Perhaps the beginning was in seventh grade, when for another assignment, I wrote a children’s book. But it was in eighth grade that I determined that writing was for me.

I pointed out to Denise that I’d rather do technical writing for the Church than for anyone else, and she agreed with that. You’ve got to have a job you believe in. That’s why, before I got my current job and I was working in a distribution warehouse, I didn’t really want a writing job that I applied for at that company. I would have had to write marketing copy for scrapbooking products, and drumming up false enthusiasm day after day for ink pads, colored paper, and wooden stamps was not the kind of creative writing I was interested in.

I enjoy creating content. I like to take words and arrange them to convey ideas, paint pictures, spur thought, and give guidance. I like thinking about what arrangement of the words will bring the best impact. I write not necessarily because the world turns on ideas or because information is a buyable product, but because words have a lasting effect on people.

That’s the explainable part. And it explains why I like technical communication. All these aspects apply.

Then there’s the part that I can’t explain. I write because that’s what I do. That part of me that awoke in the eighth grade didn’t bring with it an explanation of why writing held any meaning. And maybe at the end of the day, that’s the real reason for writing. The real reason is that deep in my core lives the urge to write, and if I don’t, there’s a hunger there.

Denise gave me a place to fill that hunger in high school, and visiting her has reminded me that one of the times it’s most important to pursue a certain goal is when it’s inextricably tied to who I am. Writing is part of who I am, just the same as my big nose and Eeyore voice.

And I have remembered that writing justifies itself. When writing is part of who you are, an acceptable reason to write is for writing’s sake.

Thanks, Denise. You have been the kind of teacher whose positive influence outlasted the troubles and awkwardness of adolescence. You have been a teacher in the truest sense: the kind who gave a student what he needed to keep going and to be true to himself. And you’re still doing it.

Share This