My Literacy Narrative . . . Finally, "Paste" Works!

My Life as a Writer – In Brief*

From the time I learned how to scribble the alphabet to the time I registered for my first college courses, I never once felt vulnerable or insecure about my writing. In fact, I was quite the little wordsmith. In the fourth grade, I wrote the Thanksgiving play that my class would perform for all the doting parents (and Kenneth Bowman did not get to be a turkey that year, by God.) In middle school, I wrote an essay for a contest on the topic of “Kindness: What it Means to Me” and got published in the Smithville paper. I still have the article somewhere. And did I mention in high school, I wrote for and co-edited the Austin High literary magazine Reflections?
Seriously. I was that guy. Or girl. Whatever. I got a lot of praise for that one special thing I was good at, my niche, and it went straight to my head. I wrote poetry, contemplated life, brooded – a lot. Wore dark clothing, listened to The Cure (about ten years too late,) the works. I fell in love with Stephen King at the tender age of thirteen and imagined that one day, after I had made the New York Times Bestseller list a few times, I would have my own secluded estate in New England somewhere. I wanted to be a Writer. So I wrote. A lot. Of crap. And then one day the little poet grew up, went to college, and got serious. I declared myself (a dramatic act indeed, somebody find me a bullhorn) an English Major.
After a few years of knowing exactly what I wanted out of life, I jumped right into the serious study of Literature. Or should I say LITERATURE. I learned quickly the art of dazzling the Faculty with my impressive academic writing skills; the semicolon soon became my dearest friend. I wallowed in the cornucopia of knowledge that is the mighty and glorious Thesaurus; yea, verily I wielded it like Excalibur. Bow before me, three-point thesis, for you are my slave.
Needless to say, academic writing gets no one on the Bestseller list. But it got me through. I started my undergraduate degree set on becoming a writer. What I in fact became, my friends, was a scholar. I learned to study things, to absorb. Now, in my second year pursuing a Masters of Arts in English degree, that seems to be all I know how to do. I can produce research and argumentative papers like no one’s business. I can even infuse my own creative je ne sais quoi into the most lifeless of assignments (go on, ask Dr. Donovan about my final paper in Research and Bib.) But when I sit down to create – not just produce – I hit a wall. I’ve forgotten how to write just for me. Not to get a grade, to win an award, to produce something that someone else wants to read, but to create something for the sake of creating. Where did my spark go?
I believe this is, fundamentally, a problem of audience. I’ve never had a concept with this problem before now. I’ve always made it a point to know who I’m writing for, and this is something I try earnestly to pass on to my students. The problem is that when I sit down to write just for the pleasure of writing, to try to recapture that sense of immense accomplishment I felt as a high school poetry geek when I finished a new poem, my mind goes blank. This is the first time in my life that I don’t feel like a writer. The one thing that I can get out of this in the short term is holding on to that feeling for the benefit of my students and tutees. If I can explore this feeling of being incapable, insecure about my own writing, maybe I can relate to them in some way.