Three Phases to the Author

When I was little, let's call it nine, I wrote nineteen words to a page. My sentences were three words long. I wrote them poorly. Often they could not be read at all.

So poorly written were these rotten words that I got my own special program. Not the 'special learners' program, for the kids in need of a slow lane. No, my little class of two was

much slower than that. They called me Will S and my partner in lyrical poverty Will C.

We shared the same name, as we shared our failures.

But time changes all things, and by my blooming teenage years, I had advanced from grammatical recluse to the titan of tenuous language that would dominate my youth. Will S wrote often,

and poorly, and with little concern for the rules around language. Will C drifted into obscurity.

Will S, the Will that is me, was not very popular with the English teacher. I was very interesting for those who read my stories, as oddly edited and woefully written as they were. There was just something different hidden within. Some nugget of insight that the standard writer stumbled over in search of their set paths. It

was mine, and mine alone. Or so I thought.

The internet was brimming with burgeoning writers like myself. In the wild west of possibility. Exploring lands forbidden to us by teaches past and present. Filling the heads of our fellow astronauts with tales of titanic and titillating adventures in equal measure. Life was open and free, and I thought, perhaps ‘that could apply to me.’

So I practised, and trained, and explained that perhaps the pain I feel at the sight of a grammar book would not define my identity. Perhaps I could arise to the station held so sacredly by the snooty, high nosed, crows that perch upon the paragon of prose and seek to throw us climbers down into Hades below.

I fought, with study as my sword, and creativity my shield. I circumvented their traps and stared the gorgon straight in the eye. Yet I did not turn to stone. I did not freeze. I did not bow to grammatical Nazis. I arose stronger, fiercer, and ate homework for breakfast while reading writing analysis before tea.

Through late nights, cold days, study bites, and summer rays; I came to see my quest was good and true. I fought my way close. I approached peace good and true.

To the dragon’s pit I arrived, the Advanced English Language class, the pinnacle of my school’s offering, the year twelve addition, newly added, with a teacher used to grumbling. It would be my white whale, and after seventeen years of being below the par, and fumbling, and foolery I would slay the beast wholesale. I would bring the establishment down with my prose. I would show them all that Will S was the only Will they needed.

At least that’s how it should have gone. In reality, my daily study, my mental gymnastics, my drive, my passion, and my being were all too little. I scored an average mark. The tutor I sourced helped little. The books I readily read helped little more. My passion got me the boldest, fattest, smuggest C+ of my life.

But third time is the charm, as they say.

I began my ‘safe career’ as a Marketer and found myself…indisposed. My legs worked fine. As my head bobbed and ate. My arms waved. My legs bent. But my soul was sad. My stories stuffed in an old gym bag. My dreams left to dust on my desk. It was a bad time. But it was not the end of times.

One day, it came, the thought, the moment, the realization that I was not yet defeated. Not yet finished. There was still time to believe in my ability to achieve. Throwing aside all rational thought, I decided that the young me, the youngest me, and the past people who had lambasted me, would not have the last laugh in this particular tragedy. I would triumph. I would succeed. I would write until I bleed.

I began with a roar, with late nights, and ample study. I read more books than even my younger selves had before. I stayed up later. Drank more coffee. And wrote until my hands cracked, my eyes popped, my back screamed, and my closest friends asked If perhaps I should learn to hit the brakes. To learn how to slow down. To stop and smell the roses; to appreciate what I had.

Instead of the brakes I hit accelerate.

I tried harder. For longer. For days and months.

And something magical happened. Something truly fantastic. Miraculous. I wasn’t the best nor even great but gosh darn could I finally write a decent yarn. I wrote poetry for a while. Then short stories. Then fantasy. Then sci-fi.

The more I wrote, the better I became, and I was never ever the same. For my late realization of what I could be, only my own lack of self-belief was to blame.

My ability to study, to focus, to build, had been sharpened over a lifetime of failure. My dogged will had born a mind used to receiving less than hoped, so as I began to write works that attracted the strange concept of praise it was a very strange phenomenon indeed. I wish my teachers could see just how high I have learned to fly. Born to scrambled words and reforged into creating paragraphs with patterns and stories with sense.

My old teachers will see what I have become. I have advanced copies of books waiting for the green light. For the publisher’s ‘okay’ and the starting gun to fire. Then they shall ship, and the child they knew who couldn’t quip, will instead become the boy who could. The one who turned it around. The little remembrance that next time they find a toddling child trudging along in the slow lane; to believe that they too don’t have to make do and can succeed in anything they yearn to achieve.