I still remember that day. Okay, not the exact day, but it was in my high school Latin class. I was seated in front of CT and beside C? Two smart guys who were friends. I’ve always hated being in alphabetical order and especially when these two were in my class. Not because they weren’t okay guys, but when you’re the only girl in the row, well, it gets boring. Being quiet didn’t help. Oh, and C? was also a Chris, he got the short form while I was always Christine, in order to tell us apart. Really?
I’ve gotten a bit side-tracked here as nothing has to do with how I write, simply a bit of background.
One class the teacher handed back some test or something and remarked how I should be writing and not printing in high school. “Sir, that is my handwriting,” I quietly answered. First time I ever spoke back to a teacher, authority figure, stood up for myself. To a teacher, I liked. Nothing more was ever said.
However, you can plainly see it stuck with me. I didn’t like my handwriting very much anyways and that kinda played in my mind – that social phobic unsure mind. Today I still have a love/eh relationship with my handwriting, but it’s how I start any story, handwritten. The scratch and flow of pen across paper. Some people like the smell of books, I like pen or pencil skating across paper. The curling of the page corners. The filled lines and sound of flapping pages. The perfectly closed notebook now popping open due to my written words.
Yup, that’s how I write.
It’s also how we pull life experiences into our fictional words. Memories have a power and writers use them. The emotion that day sticks and one day it will show up in something I write, maybe already has.
That’s also how I write…we write.