I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who liked writing as a child. I remember going to kindergarten in the States; after every day of school, my mom would always ask me how it went. I remember replying with a “boring” or “I don’t like it”. Before I moved back to Brazil in 2006, my mom had to help me relearn the language. Not only that, but the children in Brazil had to write in cursive at that age, so letter by letter, I learned to write. In both the schools I went to, we were meant to keep an agenda. In this agenda, we were forced to write all the things we did that day at school, and all the things we had to do for homework. In class, handouts were rare and handwritten notes were a consistent torture. It would take our class about the whole period to get two boards of writing down, and the ones who finished early were allowed to play at the back of the room. I would almost always finish last, being kept in during lunch or after
school. I got distracted easily as a kid, and I still do now, but at that point I detested writing and reading with all of my heart.
One day, still in Brazil, probably late 2007, I had some extra money and decided to spend it at the local bookshop. I bought two books. Dear Dumb Diary by Jim Benton and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling. At the time, I was in love with the Harry Potter movies and after the fifth movie came out, I mistook the seventh book for the sixth. I realize how awful it is to read books out of order and not at all, but try telling that to someone who didn’t know anything about leisure reading. Deathly Hallows has seven-hundred-and-eighty pages, so I started with Dear Dumb Diary. The book was a collection of drawings and writing about the events in the life of a middle school girl with rotten luck. I found it frankly hilarious and would soon save up money or please my parents to buy the next books in the series. I still didn’t like to write, but reading is an important part of getting over that hate, and well, it did the trick. I moved back to the States in late 2008, after finally reading the last Harry Potter book and just finishing fourth grade. As the seasonal difference in North and South America had it, I was to repeat half of the fourth grade. It gave me a chance to relearn my English properly, catch up to my peers in their studies, and try to make friends. The teacher I ended up with – who taught Reading and English – was brutal in her marking. The education system in the States works extremely differently. For example, if I didn’t write cursive properly or wasn’t able to finish taking notes, I could be given detention. Her name was Mrs. Godlewski and we all took to calling her Mrs. Badlewski behind her back. But her hard push did help me greatly, and by the standardized testing the next year, I had above average scores in Language and English. Persuaded by my new homeroom teacher, Mrs. Parker, I joined the poetry club and absolutely loved it. I read as much as I could – in my desk, between classes, at lunch. I began and finished the Harry Potter books. I got a library card and would take out a dozen books at a time, all read before returned. That’s probably when I started writing for fun for the first time: small beginnings of stories about girls who didn’t travel, got the guy, and always fit in.
In fifth and sixth grade I also had a brilliant English/Grammar teacher. Her name was Mrs. Urban and not only was she the technology and music teacher as well, but she was a hardcore Baltimore Raven’s fan with a great sense of humor. When we answered her grammar questions incorrectly she would point at us and the whole class would join in as she sang, “Shot through the heart, and you’re too late – you give English, a bad name”. We learned to diagram sentences, to write essays, and I have yet to learn something incredibly new about essay writing skills since then. That year I told the librarian that I was writing a book, but now I can’t for anything remember what the hell I was writing or talking about. That’s always been a goal since then though: writing a successful book.
For seventh and eighth grade, I was homeschooled as I traveled between Brazil, Argentina, the States and Canada. I became very uninspired by school because of the homeschooling, soon adapting extremely bad habits of lying and procrastination, but my English mark was always my best and the class was effortless. In this period of what some would call depression, I made writing my escape. My family has always encouraged me to write, making jokes about how I should tell our story, or how I should write a book so that we make lots of money. At one point I was writing about or more than 1,000 words per day of recreational fiction based on existing works. Being able to play with already developed characters and develop them further or work on plot building skills was great. I published some of these works on fan-based websites and they all fared well, with people asking for more and liking how and what I write. I have yet to finish any of those works, however.
Now I’m a little busier and do not write as often, but a weekend free of schoolwork could end in up to 6,000 – 10,000 words per day. I have made two major and serious (at least to myself) attempts towards writing a novel, and in both, I fail in developing sufficient plot and maintaining myself focused and inspired. I give up easily and write in short bursts of inspiration. I have taken to opening up my phone and using that to jot down ideas and plot lines when my computer is inaccessible or I don’t necessarily want to write, and it helps greatly. Be that as it may, I find that if I ever do write a book, those two issues will most likely be my biggest challenge. As a writer, I want to see myself successful and loved, because admit it, who doesn’t?
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