Classroom Connections

"Hey Miss, I didn't know you wanted to write," this echoes in my head in the voices of a thousand students in my memory.

Why would they?

Why would anyone?

For over a decade there were no clues, no signs, no thoughts cast in the direction of my writing. I was creative, I couldn't help myself there, but the journals lay dormant and the "Writing" files on my floppy discs and hard drives stayed closed. I had stopped writing.

Over the last year I have truly wondered why this was the case. Now that I have released my words and allowed them to walk the world again, they (and I) keep asking, "Why were we stifled for so long?"

I imagined it was the teaching, but felt, in the depths of my soul that must've been some sorry excuse to cover up something else I could not fully comprehend. Last night, while reading Stephen King's On Writing for the Write on Edge book club, Read on Edge, I found my answer. It seems that one of my greatest writing heroes had exactly the same problem as I did. In his own words,

...for the first time in my life, writing was hard. The problem was the teaching. I liked my coworkers and loved the kids -- even the Beavis and Butt-Head types in Living with English could be interesting -- but by most Friday afternoons I felt as if I'd spent the week with jumper cables clamped to my brain. If I ever came close to despairing about my future as a writer, it was then. [Stephen King, On Writing, page 73]

The one distinct difference between Mr. King and myself is that I did not despair about my future as a writer, I simply gave it up. I chose teaching - heart, body and soul.

No regrets there.

Never a one.

However, life has taken me down a very strange path in recent years and teaching is off the table. Leave this girl alone long enough and her words will surely surface. I've decided there's no use in denying it, just like there's no use in trying to hide my cowlicks. I roll with it instead -- spiky haircut is back and, while I have to acclimate myself to these waters I abandoned so long ago, I'm writing again.

I don't know what will come of it, but I promised Stephen King as I continued to read his book today that I would "not come lightly to the blank page."

I'm here, Mr. King, and I hope you are enjoying your Friday afternoons however they find you these days because, whether you intended to or not, you're still teaching me.