I burst into tears when I told my mother. She dismissed it. “I know you wrote it yourself. So do you. That’s what matters.” I suppose a 21st century parent would have stormed over to the school and threatened to sue because of the injury to my emerging self-esteem. Since my parents both worked full time, they expected me to handle school on my own.
When I was in seventh grade, my English teacher assigned the writing of a short story. I remember very little about my story except that it featured a girl on a merry-go-round and I wanted to create a sense of how images blurred as the merry-go-round went faster and faster. SoIwrotethenextfewsentenceswiththewordsallruntogetherlikethis. I thought it was inspired. I was sure the teacher would read it aloud.
A few days later the teacher announced that she had graded our stories. She read a story aloud (not mine) and passed the rest of the stories back. Mine had a big “F” on it and a demand that I rewrite it with appropriate punctuation.
“Stephanie, I want to talk about your story,” she said.
She then went on to talk about an Irish writer who wrote long novels that ignored the rules of punctuation, just as my story had. “Nobody understands him because he doesn’t use commas and periods.”
My parents tended to buy Book of the Month Club selections rather than more literary works so it was several years before I realized that one for brief moment my writing had been compared to that of James Joyce.
© 2015 Stephanie Patterson
Fascinating accounts! today that teacher would herself be summoned to the office and had her pay docked! tjstraw
ReplyDeleteI've heard of writers having to overcome early rejection, but this is really extreme! Yet you persevered, like all good writers do (including Joyce, I suspect). I like to think of punctuation more as a tool to aid understanding than a bunch of rules which allow pedants to heap abuse on us poor ink-stained wretches (did I need a comma there just now?)
ReplyDeleteMike Welch