Becoming a Writer, Part One

I had nev­er heard of Bea­con Col­lege. It was found­ed in 1989 and was the first col­lege in the coun­try accred­it­ed to award bach­e­lor degrees exclu­sive­ly to stu­dents with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties, ADHD, and oth­er learn­ing dif­fer­ences. Their mis­sion: know­ing that giv­en the right envi­ron­ment, sup­port, and tools, all stu­dents can suc­ceed. It’s locat­ed in Lees­burg, Florida. 

I recent­ly came in con­tact with them when they asked me to con­tribute a talk about my life as a writer, a record­ed talk, one among many, from folks who have strug­gled with learn­ing, who strug­gle with writing. 

Why me? I’ll tell you. 

I was born a twin, in the City of New York. I had an old­er broth­er. My father was a psy­chi­a­trist, my moth­er a social work­er. Smart peo­ple. She, in par­tic­u­lar, was very much engaged with her children’s’ education. 

She read to us every night, helped us estab­lish our own libraries, and as soon as pos­si­ble I was allowed to walk to the local pub­lic library and choose my own read­ing. I became an ear­ly and vora­cious reader. 

I was also a devot­ed lis­ten­er of radio—this before TV became ubiq­ui­tous. Which is to say, I was con­stant­ly lis­ten­ing to stories. 

My sib­lings must have shown their bright­ness at an ear­ly age. I, on the oth­er hand, must have revealed some learn­ing dif­fi­cul­ties. At some point (I have no idea when) I was test­ed, and some­thing was deter­mined. What that some­thing was, I was nev­er told. Nor, to the best of my knowl­edge, were my teach­ers informed. But my moth­er arranged that my sis­ter and I were always in the same class in our neigh­bor­hood ele­men­tary pub­lic school. I sus­pect that was intend­ed to help me get through. The actu­al result was, when called upon in class, and I could not sup­ply a right answer, teach­ers would turn “to my smart sis­ter” to get the right answer. 

No sur­prise. I was nev­er a very good stu­dent and was bored with school. 

I went on to a city high school, a school with five thou­sand boys. At the end of the first mark­ing peri­od, I had failed all five of my class­es. My par­ents informed me I would be trans­fer­ring to a small pri­vate school, whose stu­dent pop­u­la­tion num­bered about one hun­dred and twen­ty-five. I was much hap­pi­er there. But at the end of my sec­ond year the Eng­lish teacher informed my par­ents that I was “the worst stu­dent he ever had,” and that if I were allowed to return to the school (not a giv­en) I would need to be tutored over the sum­mer. I was also required to learn to type—because my hand­writ­ing was so bad. 

That’s what I did. The tutor, a teacher friend of my par­ents, changed my life. Pri­or to my com­ing to her, she asked to see sam­ples of my writ­ing. When I first went to her, she said some­thing that no one had ever said to me before: “You are an inter­est­ing per­son. If you wrote bet­ter, peo­ple would know that.” 

Nev­er mind that the peo­ple I wished would find me inter­est­ing were the girls I had crush­es on, her words made me want to write bet­ter. More­over, my audi­ence, so to speak, was not just teach­ers, but oth­er people. 

All my intel­lec­tu­al ener­gy soon went into becom­ing a writer. What I want­ed to write were Broad­way plays.

It was an inspired choice. Liv­ing in NYC, the cen­ter of Amer­i­can the­atre, I could see many plays, and in those days, tick­ets were rather cheap. I went often. Writ­ing plays meant writ­ing dia­logue, and since peo­ple often speak ungram­mat­i­cal­ly, I could always say, “That’s the way the char­ac­ter talks.” More­over, writ­ing a play means lots of open spaces on a page, so I could bet­ter see what I was writing. 

So it was that in a diary I kept dur­ing my senior year—the only time I’ve done that—on March 15, 1955, it reads: “I’ve made up my mind. I’m going into the the­atre.” What did that mean? I had decid­ed to be a writer. 

To be con­tin­ued.