The Power and Privilege of Writing
M
y nine year-old niece had a piece of her writing place in a nation-wide creative writing contest. Her mother called me long-distance to tell me that she is just like I am at that age with the writing. My niece got on the phone and said in this elated, quivering voice that she is going to be published. Her words got me thinking about how early in my life did I discover the power and privilege of writing. As a young girl, I was somewhat sullen and contemplative--wandering into the woods to dip my toes into the clear streams and lie back and stare at the sky as the clouds rolled by carrying my day dreams along with them. Back then, my horizons were always bigger than my own backyard as I thought about far away places and spun stories in my head.
I
wanted to read books and get lost between the pages because it was a life more exciting than my own. In my imagination, the people wore fine clothes and didn't have to put up with what I saw as the injustices of being separated from my mother. Oh, the life of a child without parents! I did have parents a few hundered thousand miles away, but I was a dramatic child in my quiet way. I felt like the orphan in many of the stories I consumed. The people in my head and in my stories spoke their minds without being told that "children should be seen and not heard".I'd always kept a make shift journal of lined paper cut to the size of diaries, and I'd adorn the cover with words like, "Dawn's Secret Diary". It was where I wrote what I thought was poetry and tried faithfully to record what I considered to be my private dreams and the latest injustices I felt were being put upon me. And it was where I discoverd my passion for writing.
I wrote scenes with rich dialogue, and sometimes, only dialogue. I felt compelled to talk in my altered world. I felt the need to pour my small soul into some form of semblence on the written page But it wasn't until I was about eleven years old that I wrote my first real story and truly knew from that moment that writing was as necessary as my breathing. It was about,of all things, a talking basketball. I don't quite remember the story or whatever happened to it, but it was clever enough to get me an "A+" and win me praise from my parents, English teacher and the other students.
And that brings me back to my niece and what she must be feeling at finding out that she has something very few have--that different something that allows her to feel special in her own right. I bet she remembers the moment she first read that letter of congratulations. It may be the seed of encouragement that is planted so that one day she finds writing as necesary as her breathing. In an author-like tone, she tells me that she's working on her second story, which brings a knowing smile to my face. Maybe a few years from now, she won't even remember what the first story was all about, but she will remember that feeling that writing brings you--like you can build your soul out of words.
What I remember was the feeling of power and privilege writing that story gave me. I had discovered the power of words within me, and the feeling of empowerment being able to form those words gave me. I also remember the feeling I got from the response to the story when people read it. I felt privileged. I saw the admiration in their eyes, and I liked being part of a privilege few as not everybody I knew could write. I liked the fact that they looked at me differently, even for just a moment, like I had this intangible thing that no one else had. But, I think the most powerful dicovery at that time was that I had a voice. I had things to say that could not be silenced or dismissed so easily. In that respect, the power writing gave me slowly allowed me to find my passion and voice. And I have not shut up since.
Copyright 2008 © Dawn Prince. Not to be reprinted without expressed permission.
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