It is 12:34 am on a Tuesday. I am working on some English paper on the narrative form, or something, of As I Lay Dying. I think back to the “hamburger” analogy I learned in fifth grade that has served as the model for every paper I have written for the past eight years.
How could such a detailed and intricate model not produce good writing?
English hasn’t been the same since middle school. I keep getting handed these “classics” (in case you’ve never taken an english class click here) and am asked to produce stiff, boring, impersonal analysis, and comparison papers. (One bright spot in english came in the ninth grade when we were allowed to choose any form of writing to use in a project about The Odyssey. Myself and two friends wrote a rap that we performed in front of the class.) I sigh and pick up the book I have read about half of and flip through the pages. A half decent idea occurs to me. I’ve read enough to throw in some quotes to support it and it leaves enough gray area for me to use big words and barley supported assumptions to skate by. It won’t be an A, but it should be a B at least. I mark a few pages with promising quotes, put down the book, and start typing.
A couple months later the AP English exam has passed and I am officially done with formal essays until I graduate from high school next month. Mr. Dodd is handing out the assignment we’ll be doing to occupy our time until graduation. I pick up the sheet of paper as it slides across the desk and start to read it. I have to write two pieces, a short story about any topic of my choosing and a narrative essay describing an actual event that happened to me.
It is 12:34 am on a Tuesday. I am reading through the sixth draft of my narrative essay. Without realizing it I have become totally engrossed in the two assignments. I finished the short story yesterday. It’s titled “His Liberation” and tells the story of a teenage boy who finds meaning in life through drug use and street fights. The narrative essay tells the story of the time AJ and I were stopped by cops in Barrington for having a BB gun in public (RI state law defines BB guns as firearms meaning there is no difference legally from walking around with an air-gun and a machine-gun on public land). The essay takes the form of a conversation between two voices in my head trying to make sense of everything that has happened and where to go next.
A few weeks later Mr. Dodd hands the pieces back. I immediately flip them over to read the comments he wrote on the back. Normally Mr. Dodd writes lengthy and honest comments detailing the successes and failures of an essay. Written on the back of my essay is the brief comment, “You have a real talent. Keep writing.” Later when I am flipping through the pieces thinking about Mr. Dodd’s comment I think about what I used to write: stories about talking animals fighting the forces of evil, a young boy finding dinosaurs deep in the woods, poems about sea turtles, my pets, or the trees in my yard. I read Mr. Dodd’s comment one more time and think to myself, “I will keep writing.”
(And I did. To read a selection of some of my work click here. Although you should probably finish reading the rest of the essay and then come back to this. It’s up to you though.)