Avi

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Becoming a Writer, Part Two

University of Wisconsin Madison
Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin Madison

After a brief stint at Anti­och Col­lege, I went to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin (Madi­son). There I had a dou­ble major, the­atre and his­to­ry. I was a B- stu­dent. I avoid­ed every Eng­lish class I could. 

(If you haven’t yet read Part One of this essay, click here.)

When in col­lege I asked a much old­er writer to read some of my writing.

His mem­o­rable response: “Avi, it takes a heap of manure to make a flower grow.” 

When I was a senior, there was a stu­dent play­writ­ing con­test. I entered it. I did not win, but I did receive a com­ment from one of the judges: “The writer of this play is clear­ly not a native Eng­lish speak­er. But he has made con­sid­er­able progress and should be encour­aged in his studies.” 

The next year I entered the con­test again and won. The script was pub­lished in the stu­dent lit­er­ary mag­a­zine, my first pub­lished work. 

I con­tin­ued writ­ing plays, and while there were some suc­cess­es (an off-off Broad­way show­case pro­duc­tion) and a direc­tor who did want to pro­duce one of my plays in Lon­don, noth­ing much came of it. But along the way I acquired a good agent, which pro­pelled me into the world of the pro­fes­sion­al writer, 

When writ­ing unpro­duced plays became too much of a frus­tra­tion, anoth­er old­er writer friend—in ret­ro­spect what we would call a mentor—urged me to switch to writ­ing novels. 

I tried that. There was some inter­est, but not much more. My agent did report that one edi­tor, upon read­ing one of my man­u­scripts, bestowed upon me “The F. Scott Fitzger­ald Bad Spellers Award of the Year.” 

By that time, I had chil­dren of my own. One of them, Shaun, liked to climb upon my lap before bed­time and ask for a sto­ry. He would tell me the sub­ject. “Rain.” “A garbage truck.” 

I would invent a sto­ry on the spot.

At that time, I liked to amuse myself by doo­dling fun­ny line draw­ings. Some of them were even pub­lished as humor­ous greet­ing cards. A writer friend wrote a book for chil­dren and went to an edi­tor with my illus­tra­tions. Her book was reject­ed, but the edi­tor called me and asked me to illus­trate anoth­er children’s book. “I’m a writer, not an artist,” I said. Her reply: “Then write a book and illus­trate it.” 

I wrote out those sto­ries I had invent­ed for my son and did some illus­tra­tions. When the edi­tor saw the work, she said, “You are right. You are not an illus­tra­tor, but I like the sto­ries. I’d like to pub­lish it.” 

Things That Sometimes Happen
Things That Some­times Happen

Short­ly after, that edi­tor left pub­lish­ing, so the sto­ries were cir­cu­lat­ed else­where. After the nor­mal sequence of rejec­tion, Dou­ble­day decid­ed to pub­lish the book. Things that Some­times Hap­pen, was pub­lished in in 1970, my first book for kids. 

When first pub­lished, the book received poor reviews, and went nowhere.

(In 2002 it was revised, repub­lished and got good reviews. It’s still in print.) 

But the writ­ing and pub­lish­ing of that book brought me into the world of children’s books, and I nev­er left it. I’ve been pub­lish­ing now for more than fifty years. 

It was only in my mid-for­ties, when vis­it­ing a school, and show­ing my writ­ing process—that is, my work­ing manuscripts—that a read­ing teacher said to me, “Are you aware that you have dysgraphia?” 

Here is a def­i­n­i­tion: “Dys­graphia) refers to (a) the lan­guage-based dif­fi­cul­ties involved in con­struct­ing mean­ing­ful and effec­tive­ly struc­tured expres­sive writ­ing and (b) ongo­ing weak­ness­es in spelling and punc­tu­a­tion that affects a stu­den­t’s capac­i­ty to express their ideas with clarity.”

That was the some­thing my par­ents dis­cov­ered about me so long ago. 

When I learned this, I went to my father—my moth­er had passed away—and asked him if he had known I had dys­graphia. “Oh sure,” he said. “Why did you nev­er tell me?” “That was your mother’s decision.” 

That knowl­edge did a few things: It was a rev­e­la­tion. I great­ly eased my frus­tra­tion. It took away my self-anger. 

In short, hav­ing dys­graphia didn’t real­ly mat­ter. I was writ­ing and pub­lish­ing. More to the point, I had found a writ­ing process—computer, spell-check­er, end­less re-writing—that mit­i­gat­ed my prob­lems with the way my mind worked. Though these days it is still there, it’s noth­ing more than a nuisance. 

That said, in my opin­ion, the per­son who invent­ed the spell check­er should have won the Nobel Prize. 

And I’m still writing. 

5 thoughts on “Becoming a Writer, Part Two”

  1. I have ques­tions and am very inter­est­ed in your expe­ri­ences and dys­graphia. When we were in HS we had read­ers who checked for grammar/punctuation/spelling and then the teacher gave us two grades:one for con­tent, one for mechan­ics. When you wrote as child did your spelling make your sen­tences unread­able or was there more to it. IE leav­ing out words. Of course the labo­ri­ous­ness of hand­writ­ing for young kids and for those with dys­graphia makes it an unpleas­ant expe­ri­ence. Could you express your­self well when telling a sto­ry back then? It seems tak­ing dic­ta­tion would help. I find it intrigu­ing that your cur­rent sta­tus as a real­ly revered and pro­lif­ic and beloved writer of many styles of books, could have had such a tricky start. I mean have you seen the dri­v­el that com­pe­tent spellers write as chil­dren. Form is great, con­tent not so much. i would love to hear more on this top­ic about your writ­ing. I am assum­ing you have no exam­ples of your chlld­hood writing.

    Reply
  2. As always, thank you for shar­ing and espe­cial­ly for shar­ing such a per­son­al sto­ry. You are a def­i­nite role mod­el for our youth who strug­gle with writ­ten expres­sion and read­ing. Your open­ness about your jour­ney is inspirational.

    Reply
  3. Avi, I have enjoyed read­ing your blog for more than sev­er­al years now. And truth­ful­ly, I have saved most of your posts in a file of my own labeled ” for Writ­ing.” With this part two post on becom­ing a writer I espe­cial­ly like the inclu­sion of your ear­ly teach­ers’ com­ments. I’m so glad you kept on writ­ing and didn“t give up!!

    Reply

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