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Short Story Society

Me? A Writer? No Way!

by Jean Donahue

Approximately 1,520 words

(I wrote this for a Personal Writing course)

We had been in high school long enough to like or dislike our new teachers. I always had a different outlook toward our teachers than the rest of the kids because Mom was a teacher and Dad was our School Superintendent. I guess I saw them more as people instead of teachers. However, I didn’t think I liked Mr. Oldson, our new English teacher. I didn’t know why. He didn’t do anything to make me not like him. He just seemed different.

Mr. Oldson stood in front of the class with his grey suit jacket and horned rimmed glasses. That day he gave us an assignment we had never had before. He wanted us to make up a story. It was due in four weeks on a Tuesday. “Use your imagination.”

“Use our imagination?” I looked at him, wondering what he meant. I didn’t know how to write a story. I had written book reports, but that wasn’t making anything up. It was telling about what someone else wrote, and I usually glanced through the book without reading much of it. I didn’t read books, which I later learned was due to my eyes. I have astigmatism, which makes everything a little blurry. It took me forever to read anything, so I didn’t read.

I sat in front of the television with pencil and paper on my lap, trying to find something to write about. I watched programs, then tried to put that story down on paper. I usually sat there with nothing on the paper. I stood up and paced, but my paper always stayed blank. I gave up. I felt completely empty for the first time in my life. I had no idea how to write a fictional story. Mr. Oldson said we should make it interesting. My mind felt blank. I tried to write something, but my mind felt blank, and the paper stayed blank.

The question kept running through my mind, “How do you make up a story?” I thought about different topics, but I couldn’t get any farther. So – I put it off. I stopped thinking about it for the next three weeks, until the weekend before it was due.

What should I do? Should I pretend to be sick? If I did that, I would have to miss basketball, and I loved playing basketball. I asked Mom and Dad how to write a story and Dad tried to tell me, but it didn’t help. I didn’t want to write a story. I didn’t see any reason to write a story – other than I would get in trouble with my father, and he was the School Superintendent. Finally I decided that I would write a couple paragraphs, but I knew it would be bad. I wasn’t interested in writing a story and I knew I couldn’t write anything good. All the good authors wrote stories from the time they were young.

That Saturday afternoon I sat down with pen and paper, but my mind was still blank. I wrote a couple paragraphs, then decided to make up a situation about a first date. The words started coming, and coming, and coming. What an invigorating surprise. I took in a deep breath. Then another one. “That was sun,” I remember thinking, “but I wouldn’t want to do that again. It’s too much work.” I held it up and read it. It wasn’t very good, but at least something was there. I had something to turn in.

I called my girlfriend and we went to the drug store for a soda. The trees were greener than they had been for what seemed like a long time. It had only been four weeks since he gave us that assignment, but it seemed like an eternity of blankness. Laughing and talking we walked the three blocks to the drug store. We looked forward to flirting with the boys that would be there. What a relief to have my life back. That stupid story had ruined my life for four weeks.

That night I was very tired and climbed into bed free of any care. For the first time since Mr. Oldson gave us that assignment I was relaxed. I didn’t have any trouble falling asleep, but kept having dreams about the story I wrote. I could write this or I could change that. I finally got up and wrote a couple ideas down, then climbed back into bed. Why would I dream about that stupid story? I didn’t understand it.

Sunday afternoon I added and subtracted to the story and turned it into a comedy situation. It felt good to be writing something, but I didn’t know why. In fact, I found I was enjoying it. After two hours it was finished. I read it and decided that it wasn’t very good, but I didn’t want to spend any more time on it. I could finally forget about it.

I turned it in and went back to my teenage life. I didn’t want to ever think about writing a fictional story again. A few days later I had the biggest shock I had received in my young life. The teacher wanted to talk to me after class. He was smiling and happy. After the rest of the kids left, he told me that he had been a teacher for 20 years, and my story was better than anything he had ever read from his students.

My reaction wasn’t exactly what he expected. I’ll never forget what I said and his expression. I said, “Oh?” His mouth opened and his eyes became glazed. He told me I had a terrific future in writing, and I could even be a professional journalist

“Oh?” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I didn’t understand what he was saying, and I didn’t want to understand what he was saying. “I can write?”

“Yes. You are a very good writer and I think you should pursue it.”

Wow, I thought. I can write!

I left that room and I thought about it. Once I got over the initial shock, writing became more appealing. I watched the reports on television and saw that they traveled many places to report on a story. Then I learned that journalists did the same thing. I was hooked on writing. I was hooked on every aspect of writing. I had acquired a luster that goes along with writing I had never experienced. I loved that luster. It felt so good.

I saw an ad in a teen magazine to join a writers group, receive free information about writing and also get a press pass that would get me into anything the press could go to. I applied and waited for the delivery in the mail. Every day I asked Dad if there was anything in the mail for me. Every day he said no. I finally gave up on it coming. About eight weeks later it did arrive. I went to my room to open it in private and read every word in the packet, several times. I could submit articles to teen magazines and get paid for them. All I had to do was go to something other teens would want to read about.

I learned that any story in a newspaper used the five w’s. Who, What, Where, When, Why. I decided the story needed something else – How. I put the press pass into a drawer and dreamed of interviewing the President of the United States as a teen reporter. As a typical teenager, I didn’t always include reality in my dreams.

About that time my English teacher wanted to start a school newspaper. That sounded exciting. I signed on to write articles for it. I was excited. I couldn’t sleep very well, and the days seemed very long until we started the newspaper.

That’s when I was told that someone very important would be driving by Granger. I could cover it for the school newspaper. I lived in Granger and my high school as in Granger. Nikita Khrushchev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was going to be in a caravan that drove by Granger. Perhaps he would stop and I could interview him. (As I said, teenagers don’t always have reality-based thoughts.) That didn’t happen, but he did drive by Granger. Dad had the whole school stand by the highway when he rode by in the caravan. Of course, I was out there with pen and paper, feeling very important. Nikita Khrushchev rolled his window down a couple inches and waved with his fingers that he poked them out the window. He looked much different than he did later when he took off his shoe and pounded it on the table in the United Nations. In fact, he looked rather comical. But you can’t say that about the leader of an important nation. I left that out of the article I wrote.

I am now on the road I dreamed about when I was in high school. The luster is back in my life forever.