The young'n days...

I can remember when I was about 4, Sundays after church picking up the comic strips only because of their colors and pictures. Despite the fact that I couldn’t read, I recall laughing aloud and slapping my knee at the comics I did not understand, only to be scolded by my brother and parents. This is when it hit me, I didn’t want to be a clown when I grew up, but a comic strip writer. I used to write short stories with pictures about a basset hound named Jed. I had to ask my mom how to spell word for word, letter for letter until she’d finally get fed up and yell, “Micah! Are you ever going to learn to write?!” It was also a bit discouraging after I realized I could not slyly slip my comics into every newspaper in town in hopes of being discovered.

After I learned to write in kindergarten, tracing letters and small words, I lost my passion to write because it was out of force, rather than enjoyment. My excitement to write flared up again when my third grade teacher introduced me to free writing for the first time. In a small journal we were free to write about anything we wanted to for 5 minutes. Slowly she began grading our compositions which lead us to be better writers by the end of the year. From here I began to keep a diary exactly like a written book of my life. In my preteen years I’d pour out in detail about my crush on the pastor’s son or the fact that my friends problems were insignificant to mine. Every time my friends did read my diary, they always encouraged me about my writing skills and how I somehow made my life appear way more interesting than it actually was.

On the writing portions of every one of my Taas and Taks test throughout my younger years I made perfect fours. As I grew up in high school my grades in English and writing were exceptionally well but I never had another teacher challenge or critique my writing again. I just put my pencil to the paper without putting any prior thought into my writing. Of course this did not flow over well in college when I got my very first C on a written paper, and many more after that.

I still truly enjoy writing. I like being challenged to write about the boring biography of a past president, or complicated topics that do not involve creative writing. Creative is writing is definitely my favorite though. Every once in awhile I’ll get a thought or a book idea and just jot a few pages down about it in my journal, just like I was taught in the third grade.