Kid Stuff

Okay, I’m writing this post now because I’ve got writer’s block with my novel. So here goes: A few months ago my grandpa gave me a bag full of papers. The papers that Grandma had kept for years-- report cards, pictures I drew at school, mother’s day poems . . . etc. I sat at the kitchen table with my sister Lori and started looking through them. I picked up the autobiography that I wrote in fifth grade.
I’ve forgotten how long the biography was supposed to be, or how many pages the other students wrote—but I had NINE. NINE pages full of details about my ten year old life.
I started reading it out loud to my sister, Lori. I couldn’t believe how good it was! After teaching seventh graders for two years, I’ve found that only a few students write consistently in complete sentences. Only a few connect their sentences in a way that helps them flow together. Only a few actually have a sense for what writing should sound like. And here I was, reading a fifth grade autobiography that would have sounded beautiful coming from a seventh grader! I was shocked. I wrote in complete sentences. I even used all of my apostrophes correctly. Every sentence had a period. Every word was spelled correctly. I even used specific details and started my sentences in different ways. Holy COW, I was a wonderful writer as early as fifth grade! I had no clue that I was that good. No wonder my ninth grade English teacher yelled at me for not signing up for the honors English class. Wow.
I thought writing was something I had developed more as a teenager and in college. But this old elementary assignment showed me that writing was a talent I’d had forever. It’s something that has always been with me.
I wonder if my writing talent was something I had in the preexistence. How much of my personality comes from my spiritual identity? I don’t think these kinds of things pop out of nowhere.