In the Beginning There Was the Word

Exercise From: Room to Write by Bonnie Goldberg

Today write about the first time words profoundly affected you. Describe the situation, what led up to it, the moment of the encounter, your physical reaction, and something else that was taking place in the same setting but had nothing to do with the experience. Feel free to allow your imagination to supply whichever of these elements you can't recall. You might try this as a poem.

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"The words! I collected them in all shapes and sizes and hung them like bangles in my mind."
Hortense Calisher
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I don't remember exactly what it was about reading and words that made me love the art of books. When I was in third grade I found this book at an old rummage sale and I picked it up because the title of the book just captured me. It was simple and short and even though I knew it was beyond my level, I couldn't help but fall in love with it.

Child of the Dark. It was a book about a girl whose mother was single in one of the poorest countries in the world. It's about a mother's struggle to provide and a daughter's struggle in a world where every odd is stacked against her.

And I read that book, although the details escape me now, and I knew that it was what I wanted to do. I wanted to write and evoke so many different emotions in the reader. I wanted to write about things that people shied away from.

That book inspired me to write poetry. I was eight years old and kept a notebook of poems. I wrote one I titled Child of the Dark, after my greatest inspiration. I just let the feeling take over and I wrote this poem about child abuse, from the point of the abused child. It was dark and probably far beyond the realm of an eight year old, but it was beautiful. And I took it to school to show my favorite teacher. She was really touched by the piece but thought I was the abused child in the poem. It made me actually feel good because my writing made them think it was possible.

And when I showed the poem to my father he was so encouraging. He asked me how I came up with it, what the inspiration was, if I was going to submit it to a contest. It made me feel incredible that he took such an interest in something I was doing. Which made me want to do it even more.

And when I was in seventh grade, I don't know what age that makes me, I read Flowers in the Attic. It was this incredible story about love and betrayal. It made me want to write something like that. So I started this novel I named Obsession about Alexis. There was so much that should have kept me from writing. I wrote thirty pages and the computer crashed, lost everything. Rewrote twenty-five pages and there was a powersurge during a thunderstorm and I lost everything. A year later I picked the idea back up and finished the final draft when I was in my second semester freshman year. I printed it out, took it to a book place and had it bound in faux leather. I was so proud of it even though it had a million misspellings, countless grammatical errors, and an incredibely cheesy plot.

I don't even know where I'm going with this. What I'm trying to say is that my love affair with writing has been a part of my life for as far back as I can remember

The epiphany I've just realized is that I'm writing these stories with characters who have deep, meaningful relationships with their fathers and I'm certain a shrink would tell you that it's my way of having a father in my life. Maybe it is. You know that song by U2, Sometimes You Can't Make it On Your Own? It's a song he wrote about his father and I know that his father abandoned him and his mother as well. There is a verse that gets to me everytime; "can you hear me when I sing, you're the reason why I sing, you're the reason why the opera is in me". And I don't know if his emotions are the same as mine, but I totally get the line in my own way. I write these really great dads who are understanding, always there, and wise and loving because I am missing that in my life. So in a way, the pain of not having a father aorund, is what inspires a part of my writing.

Alexis: Very close to her father, loves him beyond measure and he loves her the same in return.

Riley: Her father has looked for her for twenty years without giving up hope. He is kind to a fault, and loves Riley more than anything. She loves him in turn although she feels she takes care of him rather than him taking care of her.

Bianca: She has an incredible relationship with her father, one that is beyond words, a bond that is so deep they have a mental and emotional connection without speaking a word to each other.

Billie: Her dad's pride and joy. She has a sister and a brother, but she has always been her father's favorite.

The only character I didn't give a "cookie cutter" father was Tallulah. And that's because I saw myself in her more than any other character I've written.

Wow. Epiphany.