Reading biographies and autobiographies of great authors has always inspired me. I like to sit under my reading lamp and learn how writers like William Faulkner and Eudora Welty got their start.
So I’m thinking it’s time I wrote about my own path to greatness, since I plan to get on that path any minute now. If I can present this story of my rise to fame before I rise, my fans won’t have to wait until I die to learn how I became a great writer.
Oh, you didn’t know I was a writer? You’re reading this column, aren’t you?
I come from a long line of story tellers, so it was only natural that as soon as I could print my ABCs I would want to tell stories on paper like the ones I was learning to read. I wrote my way through school, learning valuable lessons that would propel me to fame and fortune.
I first broke into print in the fourth grade when I submitted a poem to our local paper for a contest. I won’t offend you by reprinting the poem, which proved that Robert Frost had nothing to fear from me. But I did win $2, slightly short of the huge top prize of $5.
That initial foray into the world of publishing taught me that a girl could support herself— or at least buy a Baby Ruth— with her art, but that she couldn’t expect to start at the top. That’s okay. I’m a patient person.
In the fifth grade, I switched to drama, writing our class play to focus on National Book Week. Because I wrote so many lines for my main character, Mr. Book, I was punished by being assigned to play him.
I was thrilled to be the playwright AND the star of the show until I saw the costume Mr. Book had to wear. While all my friends danced around me in their prettiest dresses playing Happy Readers, I made my stage debut stumbling around the stage in a refrigerator carton painted to look like a book cover.
This experience taught me that one must often sacrifice her dignity—and her fashion sense— for the sake of her art.
By the end of sixth grade, I was already on the author’s lecture circuit. Unlike my fellow students who got that deer-in -the-headlights look every week when the teacher called for our essays, I always had mine ready. Impressed that someone actually did the assignment, my teacher asked me to stand and explain my writing process to the class.
As I finished and sat down to somewhat mild applause, I distinctly heard the snotty-nosed kid on the next row mutter, “Suck up.”
“Suck this up,” I murmured to him, balling up my fist. It was a meaty fist, well-developed from gripping a pencil all the time to write those essays. He shut up.
At some point, all creative geniuses have to learn to deal with the jealousy of the no-talents.
My eighth grade English teacher required all his students to enter an essay contest sponsored by our city. The topic was “Pasadena, A Superior Community.” I won the top prize in this one, a $25 savings bond. My parents and I were invited to a banquet for all the city schools’ winners.
I tried to act as if this Great Award was nothing. My classmates cooperated, saying “Huh?” when I gently reminded them that one of their own was being honored that night.
That was the year I learned to handle success with humility.
In high school I earned no money for my writing, but I did use my ability to launch myself into a position of power, becoming the editor of the high school newspaper. This was a good lesson in “noblesse oblige” — the responsibility of the powerful to her underlings.
Unfortunately, my power only seemed to mean that my underlings could take off to Bob’s Big Boy every afternoon to scarf down hamburgers while I was responsible for staying at school to finish their work.
Noblesse oblige was not my favorite lesson. I like power, but I prefer hamburgers.
Again, I earned no money for my art in college, but it seemed that all my deer-in-the-headlights friends from sixth grade had followed me there. I was able to barter my skill in writing papers for their help in math. In this way I was able to pass College Algebra and graduate.
The lesson? Writing can lead to success in other areas if there are enough deer-in-the-headlights folks who need a paper.
In my career as an English teacher I spent 31 years coaxing teens to write when they didn’t want to. I learned that grading papers was not as much fun as writing them.
So when I came to this newspaper and got a chance to write a column, I jumped at it. But I’m just doing this while I work on my Great American Novel, you know. I’m going to start on it any day now. As soon as I can think of a plot.
I’ve already learned all my Famous Writer lessons, and with this column I have even completed my writer’s autobiography. Fame and fortune, here I come!
