About Me

Words in Pages: A Love Affair

     Her short, coarse blondish hair splayed out upon the pillow that separated her from the floor as she laid snuggled beneath a blanket in front of the thick bubbled television. The University of Michigan game was not quite as loud as the people who filled the room around her but comfortably allowed her to tune the noise out, because the game didn't matter. Nothing in that room mattered, not the way the lovely pages of that first book mattered. The way it smelled like the library her Nana had allowed her to borrow it from, the way the pages opened up to certain spots that other readers before her had found so interesting.

     Karen's Roller Skates by Ann M. Martin. This was the first time I had ever finished a chapter book on my own. I can remember turning the last page and realizing the story was over, then turning to the cover, reading the excerpt on the back and then starting the book over again because I had been so proud to have read it. I reread that book two more times that day before allowing my grandmother to return it to the library where she worked. This is where my love affair begins.

     As I said, my grandmother worked at the local library in downtown Chelsea, The McCune Memorial Library to be exact. It is this wonderful old building with all the charm and character that a historical house should have, but then it's also this wonderful place filled with wonderful memories of walking downtown to spend my afternoons tucked in between stacks of books reading. I loved the way the adult fiction section smelled, the way the pages seemed to age as gracefully as my Nana, the way they could hold your page because somehow every book seemed to remember where your favorite spot was. And my love could only grow.

     By fifth grade, I had read all of the famous R.L. Stine's Fear Street books, and tackled all of Christopher Pike's books. And I found myself pining for something new. Something I had yet to explore was calling to me like an adventurer before a journey, and it was something that I could not find in the pages of books alone. Half of this was filled with new authors and broader stories, but it didn't fill the need as I had hoped. Something was still missing. I would not find the whole answer until much later, and it would drive me to start a new.

     Middle school was all about expanding the ideas of what defines literature. We read books from other cultures such as Shabanu Daughter of the Wind by Suzanne Fisher Staples, Greek Mythology, the gruesome tales of Edgar Allen Poe, and poetry. Though this expansion for me was only ever in the reading, the idea of new text and new interpretations of works did fill some of the ache I was feeling in my soul, it never quite filled me completely.

     Up until now, I had only ever used my writing for things like papers, and essays because in school these were the only things that mattered to the teachers. A disdain for writing grew each time someone asked me to write something so impersonal, the idea of writing with this need to satisfy only what was required hollowed me. I also realized that I had never been able to compete a piece of writing to the full extent. There was always something missing. I could never truly express myself in words on pages, and then I met a teacher who changed that. The odd part, is she wasn't even my teacher that semester.

     In ninth grade, while I was an Aide in Mrs. Ott's class, we began to really study poetry. Even though I was no longer her actual student, she still wanted to include me in the class as well as my Aid duties. As students we were learning to pull poems apart to find the deeper meaning. Some students I realize struggled with the idea of having a deeper meaning to these jumbled, mixed up sentences but I flourished. Poetry began to speak to me in a way no other writing ever had. Surely books and words had meaning to me from previous things, but none like this. No other words could see so deeply into someones soul as this.

     I think something in that class, triggered an idea. It wasn't so much a conscious idea, because I was only aware of it upon dreaming, but it was an idea that stuck. I could write my inner most dreams as well. It started with poetry. The delicate brief lines that danced on pages displaying my inner most turmoils, a way to escape the lines of reality into something more. Every thought, every word, every idea went down on paper. It was like someone had opened a flood gate and everything was pouring out of me all at once, every emotion I couldn't show in public was finally somewhere I could move upon. Then because of the damn having broken, it came to me one night in a dream, dressed in black with crimson hair, the gory mess of my soon to be known future. I awoke and found paper. Scribbled it down in my own hand, and fell to dreamland to see it all play out again.

     I took that sheet of lines to school and with my pink pen in hand set forth on the best adventure, the one forever changing my destiny. Instead of listening in classes I was scribbling a scene, over and over again, until I could almost feel it breathe. By the time I had reached my Aide duties in Mrs. Ott's class my hands were covered in pink smudged pen, and I had something that seemed like a chapter. I had to sit back in the desk to look at my work, to read those lines once, twice, three times and smile to myself. What door had I just opened? Years spent in the pages of fantasy had final yielded their own on me.

     The smile on my face caught the attention of one of my friends who always sat so close by, because literature never held the same fire for her as it had for me. She'd reached her hand across my desk before I could give one shake of my head, and began to read the dream as it unfolded. Eyes on the last page, she looked up to me questioningly with mischief in her blue eyes and mouthed, “What happens next?”

     But I didn't know...

     The next day with her brainstorming help, we had a list of names. Then it expanded into a outline of a few more chapters, with characters, a family, and a means of disaster. Each chapter I would work on, and feel drained at the end but there she would be wanting another, and another, and another. Until finally there was an end. With each and every push she gave I seemed to find where my story should go, where the words could finally move into a finished whole.

     And there it was...

     This beautifully perfect first draft of a whole and actual book. My years spent reading had finally proved to something. I could feel everything inside just slide a little more right, and I could sit back in awe at the idea that I, a fourteen year old high school student had just written a rough draft for a book. The pages for a sequel book seemed to pour from me as if my second damn had been broken, and in quick time there were two.

     Freshman year came and went, and then it was moving on to different teachers who didn't seem as loving as Mrs. Ott had been. The first semester went so slowly that I'm sure a snail passed me five times to the finish line, and still since that final page, I had not written another word. It was as if every breathe of literary life had been drained from me.

     Second semester was a little different. It was required to take a creative writing class, which I was greatly looking forward to. However, I being young and full of teen self worth thought that in my writing I really could do no wrong. How misinformed I was. I can laugh now thinking back on how much I had hated Mrs. Putnam at the beginning of the class, and how lucky I am now to have known her. She pushed every button I had until I felt there were not buttons left to push. She forced me to expand on my abilities, and realize that not only was I really creatively inclined for this, but that there is always room for improvement. She pushed me to be the best at my craft, and though we butted heads constantly, I know that she knows she made a difference in my life. She encouraged me to pursue my writing and truly believed in me, which made all the difference in the world.

     The rest of high school I spent exploring other writing options, I studied journalism for two years, and worked on the high school news paper known as The Bleu Print, where we won an amazing national high school journalism award, and mention in the house of congress. I also spent some time in other creative writing classes honing and expanding on some of my ideas and abilities.

     In college I lost most of these opportuniies, I focused on a career that my father believed could be a good future for me, and because of that I have Associates degrees in Business and Accounting, which did help me to get a job I love at a bank. But it was never truly mine. A couple of years ago I convinced my brother to give college another try. He had met someone he loved and she had a child from a previous relationship and he was working at a job he hated to provide for them. It really wasn't working for him. He enrolled at Jackson Community College which worked much better for him than Washtenaw, and he really started looking forward to his own future, and being able to do so he in turned looked at me and pointedly asked, “What the hell are you doing?”

     He urged me to go back and look at my long since forgotten novel which sat on a bottom shelf of a completely filled bookcase. He knew the one thing that would always fill me in a way nothing else ever has. Words on pages in the creases of books that are filled with passion and love. So, at 27, I started here at Eastern with the goal of studying literature and refining my own writing skills because I wish, because my one wish is to share what others what was shared with me. A beautifully crafted world in which to find solace and a life outside of my own.

     So I have been in love with words since that single first book. I can remember the day as if it was yesterday, and since have read many more books many more times. The idea of being able to dive into something written by my favorite authors still makes me act like a kid, and I never want to lose that feeling. In fact, now I know I wish to pass it on. To help others create the same worlds that I would live in deep within the pages of something amazing. It has since grown into something amazing and beautiful with my own writing, and my own ability to fill pages for an audience much like myself.

     She's almost grown now, as she stares excitedly at the illuminated screen before her, the words pouring from her fingers before shes even processed them. Her upper teeth are pressed fixedly into her bottom lip and she smiles slightly to herself as she rereads the words. She saves the words on the page like saving the most important document ever written, and closes the tool in her lap wondering about the future, and dreaming of memories long since past.