I hated writing

I hated writing. Hated it. More precisely I hated all the pieces involved in it; the spelling, the grammar, the syntax. I hated it because I was terrible at it. Or so I was told.

At 7 years old I was told that I was “behind my age level in my ability to spell”.  I’m sure my recently divorced parents and their new spouses nodded with eyebrows scrunched “yeah okay, but she’s artistic”, they would have replied to then set it aside to deal with the more demanding issues of their lives. Except for my step mother, she had decided that it was her mission to stop me from being an inept speller and to teach me all the words in the dictionary. So began my new routine of spelling for my food.  

Want a snack? Not until you correctly spell “phenomenon”. Want to watch half hour of cartoons? Spell “Knowledge”. Go swimming with some friends? First spell “metamorphosis”.  And oh to get it wrong meant repetition after repetition. I would write lines and lines and lines of the offended word. 5 repetitions and then the definition followed by 5 more lines and then the definition, as if searing them into the paper would make me remember all those silent letters. To this day I could quote you the oxford English dictionary definition of “delicious”. And still the next day I would get the same words wrong.  OH, I truly hated to write.

It wasn’t long before that hate turned to fear. The fear that I would get something  wrong and it would be made a spectacle of which soon lead me to  just stopped asking for things. I stopped asking permission, and just did it for myself. I stopped asking to watch the Discovery Channel and just made some popcorn and put it on. I would pack my pink Barbie backpack and go swimming by myself. This premature independence may have been where I found the strength to successfully move out at the age of 16 and not end up with an addiction or homeless, but secretly it also cemented in my mind a screaming voice telling me that I was inadequate. 

One of the troubles of moving out so young is that you sometimes get yourself in very bad spots, spots which are morally gray and really quite lonely when you have no one to go to for guidance. With my then over developed sense of independence to attend to, I found that in these darkest hours I would write. I would write secret letters and novellas for myself. Some I would keep, some I would read out loud, others I would burn in catharsis but most would just get lost over time. But it was like this that I reintroduced myself to a world of writing that wasn’t abrasive. Where I was allowed to be creative and inventive, where I allowed myself to artistic and make mistakes.

Over the next several years I had written a number of short stories and poems, a few people even read them. I helped people word essays and resumes to be more becoming and persuasive tone but it wasn’t until I met my wife that I actually gained some courage in my ability to write publicly. She and I had been dating only a short while and I was at the time employed as an importer and sales representative of wines in my area. I am quite knowledgeable on wines and am very passionate about it. Giving evangelical advice whenever it was, or was not, asked for. She encouraged me to start blogging my wine reviews and about pretty much anything wine related. I hummed and hawed for some time however it wasn’t until I quit my job importing that I really considered writing as a hobby.  Now, maybe this is a product of my independence or maybe it’s some not so secret OCD but when I get into something; I get into it. There really is no holding me back. I get sucked in by a wave of inspiration and it pretty much takes over. And if you’re not ready for me it can be a pretty serious case of whiplash. But I’ve been on this ride before and I’m ready. I jump right in, with research, and a website and business cards and you name it, I’m ready to go. And most importantly a word processor that spell checks.  All I’m missing is the reviews.  So I start writing and editing and revamping and thinking, and I have to be honest it’s a bit intimidating thinking that your reviews will be read by others and may be critiqued. They may be argued. They may be disputed. They might be wrong. What if I was wrong? Now, wouldn’t you know it, I found myself editing and researching and never posting anything for fear of being an inadequate writer. I found myself, 7 years old again fearing asking to watch cartoons. A fear that left me paralyzed to pursue something that I actually enjoyed doing for fear of being made to feel stupid or worse, inadequate.

Then, about a year ago, just after pursuing another new hobby of horseback riding, I took a fall and I broke my spine, and I spent a lot of time at home, resting and pretty medicated. Now, I can’t honestly say that being under the influence is a new experience in my life but I can say that being on constant medication was certainly a life altering even for me. I was forced to have a lot of time to myself, and when you’re too stoned to get out of bed there’s not much you can do but tackle your own demons. And that’s not something one tackles lightly. I will be forever grateful to have had my wife with me through all of this; she had encouraged me while being my most trusted editor. Not to mentions that she has the patients of a saint to put up with my bitching and whining. But even with her all of her loving saintliness, it wasn’t until I started work and picked blogging back up that I truly was becoming myself again. And you would be surprised how much liquid courage you can get out of a glass of wine.

Since then I have started blogging again slowly, letting ideas sit as drafts in the ether of the internet, waiting for them to grow and come to life. While I can’t say that I’ve done the volume of writing that I did before I fell, I can say that I’m happier and certainly less critical of it. I feel like it’s more of an expression of me then of a genre or review. And I’m becoming more okay with the fact that I’m not an expert. So, in summary, what made me the writer I am today? That’s simple; it was a good woman, spell check and a glass of wine.