True North
As a parent, there are probably few greater feelings than knowing your child has found their true north. When Oldest Daughter drifted from violin for a while in early high school, I was worried. Because deep down, I was pretty certain it was her true north, but you know . . . people have to discover that for themselves, so all I could do was watch and pray.
Oldest Son . . . he and schoolwork were not on a first-name basis. Well, that is not quite true. They were WELL-ACQUAINTED but not in a good way. Getting him to do his homework was for several years something akin to torture for ME, as the primary ass-kicker around here. Then I decided to just let him fail. Because really? I was not going to follow him off to college someday nagging him to do his homework. A few Ds, a sprinkling of an F. I sat him down and said, "So? You tired of bad grades yet?" I let him fail even though I knew his IQ was at genius. A little failure doesn't hurt a kid. To make a long multi-year story short, he ended up discovering what I knew all along. That math was his true north (though he is doing really well in physics!). He applied to a governor's academy and is now a straight-A student in high school. He is happy every day. EVERY DAY. I am delirious with joy . . . HAPPY every day of HIGH SCHOOL? Happy with a heavy course load of physics? Happy? The joy of your child finding their true north.
Which got me thinking about writing. It has been this constant in my life, though for a brief (!!) period of about a year, I toyed with a different career, which largely made me miserable. It paid really well (human resources), but it was just not for me. I wanted to be alone, behind a computer, playing with words.
Writing . . . has been my friend since I started keeping a journal in third grade. Since I started making up stories about the same time. I wrote my first play in second-grade. No matter what I was going through in my life, writing was there. (As were books, my first friends!)
I don't know that I spoke the words often: "I want to be a writer." Not very often at all. I think because that invites questions. "Well, what do you want to write?" And until I was in my twenties, I don't think I knew the answer.
But like all true norths, just because I didn't say the words doesn't mean it wasn't there.
I am always rather fascinated by people who take up writing late in life. I wonder if they ignored the voice inside. Or stumbled into it.
So tell me . . . how and when did you discover your true north?
31 comments:
I remember back in about the seventh grade. We were given a writing prompt, but I think it was flexible seeing as I ended up writing about a bunch of boy scouts getting ripped apart by wolve...thingies. Remember that I was a very disturbed little fellow. But even so, Ms. King bragged on my story in front of the whole class. After that she started reading whatever I wrote and we'd just talk about my stories. I think the realization was slow. It wasn't one of those fireworks and trumpits moments, and I wonder if it's still building today.
I feel lucky to have figured out my calling early on. Of course, it's been a lot of trouble. Not that I'm sorry about it, but sometimes I wish my realization had waited it out until college. Too much heartbreak to try and do something when you're a teenager.
JT:
All my writing was private for a long time. I remember my teachers always reading my stuff aloud, but I don't know that being a writer, for real, was something I embraced until later. It is gratifying to me to hear from so many middle-schoolers and high schoolers who KNOW this is what they want to do. But on the other hand, like you said . . . it's not an "esay" choice. Though I think for a lot of writers, it does feel like a choice at all but a calling.
E
I've written rather extensively about this on my website, my blog and God knows where else, but I'll give the encapsulated version here. I was in college struggling thru a degree in microbiology. I read an essay by Stephen King called something like, "The Making of a Brand Name" and was inspired to try my hand at writing a story. And that was it. I was hooked. I can easily look back at the 21 years or so preceding that and realize that I was a huge reader who sometimes kept journals or wrote the occasional story--the ingredients were all there--but it never really occurred to me that a writer was someone who wrote, not someone who went to school for it (necessarily) or who was somehow ordained to be a novelist.
Mark:
Yeah. Novelist is such an improbable career. I am sure few people think "Hey . . . that's what I'm going to do for a LIVING." Many people want to write the Great American Novel, but few do and fewer get published.
E
I have an artist's heart and that's been since my Beginning. I started writing in fourth grade with my best friend. She was always better than me. Still is.
I'm coming to realize both my kids have artist's hearts, too, but in very different ways than me, which probably has helped me grow more in the last year than anything else. You somehow expect your kids, when they show inclinations toward something you love, to do it just like you. It's a good thing they don't! I'm a very messy artist.
I put it aside several years because the disapproval had been a lot to bear. I'm stronger now. That's one thing I hope to spare my kids.
I like the story of letting your son fail and I'm glad he's happy now. I'm thinking we're headed there at some point with my son. At the end of the day, kids really want to please the world. If they can find a way to do that while following their heart-- well, the earlier the better.
starbucks:
It helped that my oldest son is probably the kindest person I have ever met or will every know in my entire life. I know a lot of people think that about their kids, but it's no delusion . . . he is the one who volunteers in nursing homes, the nursey at church, will do chores without being asked. He actually told my best friend that he couldn't take allowance for chores "because I just do them anyway just to help my mom." So I sort of felt that if the ONE thing we had conflict over was grades . . . then really, I was much more interested in him as a PERSON than as a report card. But I worried inside that it might be a point of regret for him someday. THANKFULLY . . . he's 14 and seems to have found his inner compass intellectually.
E
Writing was my true north before I even thought about publishing as much as a blog let alone anything else. I didn't write for a long time and was too busy to even miss in the moment, until I realized about 6 years ago that I was no longer doing anything creative. At all. I wrote a few essays that are long lost to old computers forever gone, but that's how it started again. And the jump start to my first blog was by a stranger - or a blind date really - who said, "Your writing is really well suited to blogging." All he'd ever read were my emails. I went home from that lunch and researched blogs. I have not stopped writing since. But I wrote a book about my Barbies when I was about 10 I think, took black and white photos of them, developed them in my dad's darkroom, and published my book right in my orange and yellow shag carpeted bedroom. So I think it was there all along.
I graduated college in 1983 with an English degree concentrating on creative writing. I didn't think I had it in me to write anything as long as a novel, and I knew I would never be able to make a living from poetry and short stories, so I spent the next twenty years doing things other than writing. I went through a songwriting period in the late 80s/early 90s, but didn't start pursuing fiction seriously until about six years ago. I think I've found my true north with the novel.
Now I'm just waiting on my seven-figure advance.
Amy:
That is so cool about finding your blogging voice!
Jude:
Sure, pal. You let us all know when you get the seven-fgure deal. You're buying.
I never look at writing in terms of when I first started, because I think I've always written things. When I was little I'd write books and plays and songs... you name it, but I've never really sat down and tried to figure out when I first put pencil to paper. I started reading at age 3, so I imagine the writing happened shortly after.
As for figuring out it's my true north, I think that took a little longer, mainly because I didn't think writing was a profession that was very practical. Now that I'm being forced to find a design job (to get a visa I have to work in my "field") I'm dreading it.
I'm buying for sure. In Paris!
I think it's great that you stepped back for a while and let your son make a few bad scholastic choices. People need to learn from their mistakes, although I can only imagine how hard that must have been for you. Definetly a better lesson to learn earlier than while at college!
I've known that I want to be a writer since I was about eleven. In high school I had a similar experience to you and many of the commenter where everyone truly enjoyed reading and listening to my writing prompts on a very different level from the other ones. The teacher would save mine for last as a reward for listening to all the others (and no one wanted to go after me). But I've been focusing on honing my craft for the most part. It's only been more recently that I've been feeling ready to take it to the next level :)
I don't know that eveyone finds their true north. I can remember in high school feeling bad for the people who didn't really know what they wanted to do. I always had something - for the longest time it was drawing and painting, and then the writing overshadowed it... and here we are. That doesn't make it easy, obviously. But there is something about knowing what makes you happy. I loved drawing and painting, the feel of charcoal on my hands, I could get lost in an art supply store for days just to be around it... but writing, well, writing's even more than that to me.
I don't know though that I'd call it a true north - my path meanders and dips and sways, and it always heads back to the artistic, but it's not a straight shot anywhere... there's too much else in there and most of the veering I've done improves the writing I try.
My daughter is, at this moment, killing me as far as school work goes. True north for her - I don't know. Definitely creative. Unmistakably creative. She plays piano and percussion in the band (in fact she's played percussion only for a year and was given second chair against six other kids who've been playing much longer... and she wants to battle the first chair kid, because she's that way)... she wants to learn drums, because she wants to be the first ever girl drummer in the jazz band... but she also wants to play piano in jazz band and she can't do both, obviously.
Her English skills are through the roof, but she's currently getting D's in her English classes and the thing that kills me is she's Aced every test, but not turning in homework has harpooned her grade.
SHe made up and did a skit at the sixth grade camping trip, and a teacher stopped her and told her she should try out for the school play... so now she wants to try drama. (It's probably a perfect fit for her, except she much prefers making up her own lines to following someone else's)
The thing is, she's brilliant. I know everyone says that, but she is much more naturally intelligent than I am, at every subject. And because she knows she can skip reading the material and still get a B, she's lazy.
You can't be lazy and creative. It's a terrible combination. We all know how hard it is to make a career in any of the arts... so yeah, right now I'm struggling with the whole, let her sink or swim thing. Because she has to learn it on her own, but I so don't want to see her sink.
I wasn't so much a writer, but an imaginer and reader. I imagined years-long stories my whole life.
But I'm pretty focused: once I chose piano in 4th grade, the blinders went on. Stories were always there, starting in 1st grade when I stared out the window all the time, continuing in 2nd grade when I learned to appear as if I were hanging on a teacher's every word while I was living in story worlds in my head, LOL. I joke about it, but seriously, the first day I finished a story was the first day I fell asleep in under two hours (like five or ten minutes). It was such a relief.
Still, the universe had to convince me. It felt a bit like it was herding me, LOL. Like it showed me a Fun Path, and every path diverting from Fun Path would end in suckage, until I finally got the message, LOL.
I've known writing, or at least messing with words, was a true north for me since I was in grade school.
Melanie:
I think that's why I never tell my kids to consider practicalities. I don't want them to wander from their true north. They can figure the rest out later.
E
Merry,
Forgive me for commenting on your comment ... but your daughter and I could have been siblings. I graduated from high school with a 1.6 GPA and only got into college in a remedial English program. I was literally thrown out of my first SAT sitting. And my senior year, I was caught sneaking from a first-floor window during finals ... I had the misfortune of running into the teacher in the parking lot. He made me crawl back in the same window, and the sub was shocked (and delighted, I might add).
But I worked it out. I retook the SAT and killed it. I ended up transferring from my first crappy college into a much better second college. And now I've been a professional writer for almost 15 years and love it. Some of us, I think, are square pegs in a round-holed world, and operate at our own speeds. I don't know your daughter, but if I can pull my s*%$ together, I hope she can too.
To Erica's original question, I guess I've had the fortune of being a born writer. That doesn't mean I'm the greatest writer, but there was never any serious question in my mind or anyone else's that I would be writing for a living. I can't remember a single conversation with my parents growing up about me doing anything else, and except for a period when I wanted to be a very rich hedge fund manager (I was 17, what can I say?), this is all I've ever known. It runs strong in me.
That said, and even though I do think I'm fortunate to know what I want to be when I grow up, it doesn't make it any easier. I'm still knocking my head against that same brick wall ...
When I was in jr. high, I realized that I loved writing. Then, in high school, I won a spot at a journalism conference in Washington DC. It was fantastic, lots of writing, lots of great kids with similar interests, but we also met with journalists. I didn't meet one that I actually liked. Then a social worker spoke, and I loved him. He said all the things that nobody else had said--the things that I thought needed to be said.
In college, I was signed up to be an english/ psychology major, and then stumbled upon a sociology professor and once again, found somebody saying the words that actually mattered to me. I figured I could write while doing sociology(and psychology), and switched majors.
Now I wish that I had a few more writing classes under my belt, but I can always take classes. The theme that comes back to me in my life is that what matters to me is people and their problems. I can, and do, always write.
I went on a job interview about a month ago. I was flying with passing colors until one of the interviewers asked this very last question: "Where do you see yourself in five years?"
This position would have allowed me to use my skills are a paralegal, but I wouldn't be working in a traditional law office--I shudder when I think of working in a traditional law office. Every question prior I had answered honestly and had thought of beforehand so that I didn't stick my foot in my mouth.
But this question, I couldn't come up with an answer that didn't involve "Writing" in some way.
That's the crazy thing because the law is my other passion. I get a great satisfaction from the work I will do as a paralegal. It's not a career or subject that I visualize when I think "Where do you see yourself in five years?"
It's not my North and I've known it since I was 19, but one little question five years later confirms it for me.
Lauren:
I set out from college intending to be a book editor. Then I got into ghosting . . . and a bunch of other experiences kind of fell in my lap.
E
Merry:
I've got four kids. They're each arriving at their respective paths in completely divergent ways. It's actually pretty interesting to watch unfold.
E
Writing was always in my life, but there were a few instances where my compass got a little misdirected (I won't go on my rant about how teachers can really crush a kid's dreams).
It was until college that I found my passion for writing again.
I circled around my True North for many years. I wrote poetry in college, majored in English, then kept extensive journals about wilderness trips, then taught writing for fifteen years and wrote right along with my students.
I discovered young adult literature because of my teaching, and after reading hundreds of great books I followed the compass arrow and started writing.
I wrote part-time for five years but the stories kept coming so I resigned from my teaching job two years ago to write full-time and I love it. Soon my YA novel, Placement, will be out on submission.
I have three other manuscripts I'm working on. Everyday is magic. I'm very happy that I found my true north after all those years of teaching and traveling. Those experiences are all part of my True North.
Natasha:
I was a lifelong imaginer too.
E
Joe:
A lot of grade school company around here.
E
Lurker:
OK . . . seeing you as a hedge fund manager. HI-LAR-I-OUS.
E
Heather:
In college, I majored in English, Journalism, and Sociology with a minor in Creative Writing! LOL! Sociology . . . loved it.
E
Nadine:
I have ranted on that subject on this very blog.
E
Paul:
Thanks for dropping by. I visited your blog. You, sir, are an interesting man!
Good luck with your submission.
:-)
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