Reprinted With Permission of Currents Magazine – October 2023

Reflect backward with me for just a few minutes. 

It is your junior year in high school.  It is early October.  When the second period bell rings in three minutes you must be in your desk in the front row, middle desk.  Perfectly placed.  Your 11^th-grade English teacher, Mrs. Graem R. Copp, will see you whenever you are tempted to glance left or right.  Cheating is not your modus operandi, but ADHD is—especially when you put off your homework.

The bell rings, and Mrs. Copp begins writing the day’s assignment on the board. 

“Write a two-page essay…” Those four words bring fear to your young soul about what is next.  Mrs. Copp finishes writing, and when you finally look up, you are panicked as the day’s assignment was: “Write a two-page essay on the topic: The significance of Rev. Johnathon Edwards’s sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” 

Mrs. Copp adds verbally, “You will be graded on grammar, spelling, punctuation, and creativity.  Your essay is due in 45 minutes as you leave class.”

At this point, your anxiety reaches volcano stage as you realize reading Johnathon Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” was your weekend homework assignment that you put off to go to the Homecoming Dance.  You suddenly feel a strange kinship to Rev. Edwards’s sinners.

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This is not writing.  Writing is a wonderful thing.  What a shame that we all did lots of creative writing in grammar school and almost none in secondary school?  Let’s see if I can help you purge your soul of your fear of writing.  I have one abiding principle and four suggestions about writing to get you started.

Abiding principle: Writing should be fun.  For me, it is a competition.  Can I get my message across in as few words as possible and have it perfectly understood?  That is still the goal of my columns for Current, as I am limited to a word count of about 600-700 words.  I find it fun to meet that goal.

Suggestion 1: Don’t worry about grammar, spelling, or punctuation.  Write what you hear in your head.  Most of the time, you will be about 80-90 percent correct!

Suggestion 2: Don’t fret over coming up with a topic.  Your life is filled with hundreds of stories of success, humor, drama, and even tragedy.  Let those stories pollinate your creativity.

The story below is about meeting my wife for the first time back in 56 years ago. 

She was the cutest cutie I had ever seen.  Shiny dark black hair in a pixie cut.  One could get lost in her dark brown eyes, surrounded by the longest natural lashes I had ever seen.  She was elfin in every way, except she had the biggest laugh I had ever heard from a Southern female.  It came deep from her South Alabama country roots.  No genteel tee-hee-hee from this cutie who stood before me.  I was smitten with that face and that laugh that weakened me at my knees.  We were married 18 months later at Spanish Fort Baptist Church on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Reading these words to her a few weeks ago brought out that smile that slayed me back in the summer of 1967.

Suggestion 3: Read what you have written out loud to yourself.  If it doesn’t sound right, you know it and can revise!  Most modern word processing programs will read what you have written back to you in many different accents.  Personally, I prefer Aussie female!

Suggestion 4: Publish what you write.  I don’t mean with a highfalutin New York publisher, but to your spouse, children, or grandchildren by mail, email, or text.  Just do it.  And keep a copy for yourself.  Once comfortable, put your favorite story on Facebook for your friends.

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Abe Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was 267 words and delivered in two minutes and still memorized by schoolchildren today.   Funny.  I can’t seem to remember who speechified for two hours before President Lincoln. We are not Abraham Lincolns, but to have our stories written for our families in our own words is pretty noble all the same.