How Words Changed Me: My Literary Life Story

Aileen Davidson

Dr. Pamela Winsor

ED 3503: Language in Education

September 30, 2015

I have always loved words. Words are

both beautiful and awful. They hold
the ability to not only allow us to communicate our perspectives and feelings, but to
dive into the very marrow of our bones. Spoken words are powerful. We have all felt
the sting of an unkind word, and the exuberance from a word of praise. I would
argue that the written word is even more powerful. The written word is a gift that
not everyone in the world has the privilege to unwrap and revel in.
My unwrapping of written language began when I was very young. Even before
going to school, reading and the written word intrigued me. From the age of three or
four I would read to people. My mom and dad had read me a certain book about a
teddy bear picnic so many times that I had memorized the words on each page and
recited them to aunts, cousins, uncles, my little brother, or anyone who would
listen. I had a very positive experience with literacy even as a small child.
Reading holds an intrinsic value for me. I suspect my parents had a large impact on
that aspect of my life. When I think about my dad, I frequently remember him sitting
at the table with a book. He particularly loved Westerns. I like to think that my love
of reading is a part of me that is very much like him. Its a piece of my dad inside of
me, even though he has been gone for many years now.
I remember going to kindergarten and learning the alphabet both frontwards and
backwards. I was not a very dedicated student, because I wanted to get everything
done as quickly as possible so I could play with my friends. I had homework in
kindergarten. I remember sitting at the kitchen table copying out letters over and
over in a scribbler. I never cared that much, because if I had to do the work at home
it meant I had spent time having fun at school. This attitude toward homework
meant that I frequently received report cards with comments such as Aileen is a
very bright student, but she needs to apply
herself. The end of kindergarten is
when I started writing stories. Here is a
photo of an excerpt of a story that I found
in an old notebook, a piece of literary genius
from a 6 year old, complete with illustrations:
I have no recollection of writing this, but I assume my dad helped me, since its his
writing on the date at the top. Im so glad my parents were involved in my learning.
Grade one was when my love of reading started to grow. There were about twelve
kids in my class, and the majority of our group excelled at reading. I dont
remember a lot of the books that I started out reading, but I do recall the very first
scholastic book order that I got. It was the full boxed set of the Junie B. Jones books
and a diary with a lock on it. That was probably in grade two. I loved those books,
mostly because I thought Junie B. was hilarious. That was also my first diary. I would
write in it, lock it, and hide it in my room. My little brother would find it and try to
pick the lock and reveal my secrets (because seven year olds have a lot to hide,
apparently.)
In grade three I discovered other literary characters who would have a bigger
impact on me than I knew. This is when I entered what my mom called the
bookworm stage that I never really grew out of. I devoured books like The Box
Car Children, the Three Cousins Detective Club series, and Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory. I immersed myself in the Animal Ark books, the Dolphin
Diaries, and any book with an animal in it. I was convinced that being a marine
biologist was my true calling. I read on the bus, walking home from the bus, sitting
at the kitchen table, upside down on chairs, in blanket forts, outside, and even in
the bathroom. My mom and dad would read our World Book encyclopedias with me.
I think I still have pages on roman numerals and pigs bookmarked in two of them. I
received a childrens dictionary and a childrens encyclopedia of science as gifts
from various family members. I read the back of cereal boxes at breakfast, and my
moms newest way to get me to do my chores was to take my books away so that I
would be in the real world long enough to actually hear what she had asked me to
do. Every time a scholastic book order came I would beg for books, until my mom
explained that they were too expensive for us to buy, and I contented myself books
from the library.
This was the year that my dad passed away. There were a lot of emotions I had no
idea how to handle or express as an eight year old. This is when books became
better than reality for me. I found that when I was reading I could forget who I was
and just become someone else for a while. I became Anne of Green Gables, Laura
Ingalls Wilder, and Pippi Longstocking. My aunt started lending me the Narnia books
in grade four and I became Lucy Pevensie. The Chronicles of Narnia quickly
became my favourite series of books, and remains my favourite to this day.
I also started to learn that writing could help me understand my own thoughts and
feelings. I started journaling in grade four, with a slightly narcissistic and adolescent
idea that maybe when I died one day someone would find my journals and
remember me. However, writing down my thoughts did help me to process them,
and I continue to find that I am better at expressing myself in writing, especially
when it comes to articulating my emotions.
Grade five is when I started to love the idea of novel study. We read The Island of
the Blue Dolphins and Bridge to Terebithia as a class, and I enjoyed the discussion
and comprehension questions we did in our workbooks. I especially loved making
dioramas at the end of each unit, visually representing what I imagined the setting
and characters of the books to look like. I discovered a further world of fantasy in
grade six when my cousin gave me J.R.R Tolkiens The Hobbit for my birthday. I read
The Breadwinner and Parvanas Journey, and for the next half of the year, all my
short stories were set in Afghanistan. One of those stories was published in a
Canadian contest for young writers.
I had an amazing junior high language arts teacher. He encouraged a wide range of
reading, and my book choices ranged from Calvin and Hobbes to King Lear, and
everything between. This language arts teacher was old and eccentric, and very
blunt and sarcastic with us, but I appreciated his honesty and intelligence. He was
fairly strict, and he tended to pick on me because I talked too much. He referred to
my love of interacting with classmates as verbal diarrhea. This medical condition
earned me a grand total of twenty-nine lunch time detentions from this teacher over
the three years in his class. This is how I learned some very important spelling. For
each detention I had to write out five words three hundred times each. I can spell
words like parallel, embarrass, separate, consciousness, and psychedelic
like nobodys business. He may not have been the kindest teacher I ever had, but
he was my favourite. He made us memorize the comma rules, the semicolon rules,
and the colon rules. We memorized the coordinating conjunctions and had to be
able to explain what a parenthetical element was. We did grammar worksheets,
spelling tests, and more grammar worksheets. Every week we had to write a
paragraph to hand in Monday morning on a topic that he chose. Some topics
included If my brother/sister were my mom/dad, What is a Kerplunker?, and
Where is the country of Ziponia? I really enjoyed writing these weekly paragraphs.
This was when I started to learn more about creative writing. This teacher really
focused on spelling and the mechanics of grammar, and it made me a better writer.
However, he also had us do lots of creative work, mostly in the form of short
narrative stories. We had to write eight short stories every year in his class, and we
were encouraged to submit our work to young writers contests. I had one other
submission published through these contests, and even though I knew it wasnt that
big of a deal, it was still exciting to see my work in an actual bound book. I began to
love creative writing. I loved coming up with strange and exciting plots, but mostly I
enjoyed creating and developing characters. I found it helpful to project my
emotions onto characters. I could make characters be anything I wanted them to
be, even when I wasnt who I wanted to be. I still love developing characters,
although I havent had a chance to do much creative writing since I started
university.
High school was much less of an exciting time in my literary life. I felt like my high
school teachers didnt teach me as much as my junior high teacher had, and it
seemed like most of the content from our classes was a joke. I especially hated
movie studies in English, partly because I didnt realize that viewing is considered a
language art. I enjoyed the books and plays we read, and I still enjoyed book
reports, but I was not as engaged as I was before. I had really high marks in English
and never really had to try. I did plenty of reading on my own time. Probably one of
my favourite books from High School was Wild Geese by Martha Ostenso.
University was a wakeup call for me. This is not unique or uncommon. Learning how
to take care of yourself can be a jolting experience. I was also struck by the terrible
realization that I was not nearly as good at writing essays as all my high school
teachers had led me to believe. My marks dropped into the Bs, and I began to panic.
My English 1900 professor was a very tough marker. We didnt get away with very
much, especially wordiness, and as readers may have picked up from the term
verbal diarrhea, I am a wordy person. It was difficult for me to learn how to use an
economy of language and fill my papers with legitimate research and points backed
up by scholarly evidence instead of fluff. Although I struggled in that first English
class, it made me a better writer. This initial introduction to economy of language
made me successful in higher level classes, even though it destroyed my mark in
that first class. I also began taking Spanish classes as part of my degree. I had
never studied another language before I came to university. Spanish has easily been
my hardest class for all three years that I have been here. It makes me appreciate
the ability to listen and speak in English with so little effort. Its interesting to
compare my two language experiences. My English language arts developed from
viewing and listening, to speaking and visually representing, and finally to reading
and writing. In my attempt to acquire a second language, I find viewing, visually
representing, reading, and writing much easier than speaking and listening. Even
after two full years of Spanish, I struggle to understand what people say to me, and
it takes a million years for me to form a simple sentence if it requires anything
beyond present tense. This course also taught me a lot about English and different
parts of speech. I can definitely sympathize with people trying to learn English now
that I understand the struggles of learning a new language.
My second year of university was an explosion of my love for literature and my
newfound (still growing) talent of critical analytical essays and research papers. I
have taken many English classes now, but my favourites have been Prose Fiction,
Survey of Childrens Literature, and Survey of Victorian Literature. The books, short
stories, poems and plays we read in these classes took me into their grasp and
changed my views on these various genres. I loved reading new stories and novels
in Prose Fiction and Victorian Literature, but I particularly liked the Survey of
Childrens Literature. I think childrens books will always be my favourite. There are
some things in life that can only be expressed well in a childrens book. Childrens
literature had such an impact on me as a young reader. I would be a different
person if I had not had the chance to be Anne Shirley, Nancy Drew, Stargirl, and
many other characters first. I continue to love my old books. Cornelia Funke, the
author of the Inkheart trilogy puts it quite aptly Isnt it odd how much fatter a book
gets when youve read it several times? As if something were left between the
pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells, and then, when
you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly
younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed
flower, both strange and familiar (Cornelia Funke, Inkspell). I like to read old books
and remember how I felt the first time I read it, as if Im finding a piece of myself
inside of its pages. Most of my books are dog-eared, some have juice or water
stains, and many have flowers or leaves pressed inside. An old book can contain
many memories. It reminds me of who I used to be, who I am now, and how the
child inside of me is always there, like the rings inside a tree. Even books like Where
the Wild Things Are remind me of important parts of childhood, and how that five-
year-old who looked at picture books and liked to climb into her moms lap is still
inside of me somewhere. However, when it comes right down to it, it was not whole
books, but paragraphs, sentences, and even words that changed me.
Books, paragraphs, sentenceswordshave changed me in more ways than I can
count. One of the less whimsical and most powerful ways that reading has changed
me has been through reading the Bible. As a Christian I believe that the Bible is
more than just stories, sentences, and words. It is not just a book. It holds more
power than any other book I have ever read. For the word of God is living and
active, sharper than any double-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of
spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the
heart (Hebrews 4:12, ESV). In the grand scheme of things, it is the most
magnificent story to ever be told, and it boggles my mind to think that I am invited
to participate in the story. As much as I desired to be any character besides myself
throughout my life, the Gods Word is where my identity has been centered. The line
between who I am and who I want to be is grounded in Christ. I still love to delve
into a good book and live vicariously through characters, but I am not so
disappointed when I come back to reality as I was before I realized what Jesus has
invited me to. My faith and belief that the Bible is true, and ultimately, that Jesus is
true, changes everything.
I hope that as I continue on my journey to teaching that I will get the chance to curl
up with a cozy blanket, and a big cup of tea, and read many more books that will
continue to change me. I want to take this passion that I have for reading and
writing and pass it on to my students. I think that literature not only gives students
a richer life, but also a greater chance of success outside of school. I want them to
see the value of a good book, the enjoyment found in using the imagination, and
the beauty and cruelty of words. I want them to become enthralled with how words
become entangled in their thoughts and seep into their bloodstream. I want them to
feel a thrill when they speak words they have only seen in writing, and to know the
impact that their words can have on others. I want literature to come alive for them,
and to inspire creativity and passion and discovery. I want them to visit other cities,
other countries, and other worlds through books. I want them to time travel and be
lost at sea. I want them to experience loss and be afraid of imaginary villains, so
that when they encounter these in our world they will know what to do. I want them
to laugh at the silly parts, and cry at the sad parts. I want them to realize that they
are not alone in what they think and see and feel.
I hope that I can teach them how to express their thoughts, ideas, and emotions in
writing. I want them to express themselves clearly and feel understood, and to
develop the ability to understand others in both verbal and written communication. I
hope that when they are hurt, they can write about it, and when they are happy
they can write about that too. I hope they will go on to use their literary knowledge
to write scientific papers, poetry, and grocery lists. Most of all, I want them to
appreciate the life that they have been given, and the gift of words.

MY WRITING PROCESS (For This Piece)

Brainstorm/Gather Ideas
-We become what we read (Anne, Laura, Pippi, Nancy, Lucy)
-The power of books/words/imagination
-We read to know we are not alone-C.S. Lewis
-Movies (viewing) and acting out (Visually represent) before I could
read. (Pocahontas!)
-Reading at age three/four
-Kindergarten/Grade one writing
-Grade 3 bookworm stage
-Intrinsic value of reading
-Novel study
-Creative Writing, Critical Analytical Essays, Close Reading, Learning
how to write a real essay
-Passion for reading! Teaching how reading can change you.
Organize Ideas
 -Organizing ideas for this piece was really easy, because I pretty much
put it in Chronological order. I usually have to organize ideas in several
different stages for research essays, but not for this writing.
First Draft
-I started writing out and expanding on my ideas. I have the rule Dont
fall in love with your first draft because I usually end up completely
reorganizing my structure and occasionally even the topic at this point.
But that didnt happen for this autobiographical piece.
Peer Review
-I also dont usually get the opportunity for peers to be involved in my
writing process. It was nice to hear some feedback from another point
of view. Some things she mentioned were things I already knew I had
to fix, but were still helpful. She said she really liked my intro, and that
I needed to make my transitions between paragraphs a little smoother,
as well as trying to include the 6 language arts more intentionally.
Revision (Add, Change, Move, Subtract)
-I took out a few ideas (like C.S. Lewis quote,) and added some new
ones (like books containing a piece of who we used to be). I also
changed and clarified some. I didnt really move any, because, again,
chronological order.
Edit
-I usually edit my essay in stages (looking for flow of ideas/argument,
and then for grammar and mechanics, and then for general errors I
may have missed in the first two edits by reading it from the back to
the front.) Because the nature of this piece is different, I also changed
my editing process. This time I edited for grammar and mechanics, and
then did one backwards read for errors. This is also when I made my
cover page & title and whatnot. I appreciated being able to use a less
formal voice in this writing, and my mechanics (such as the use of
ellipses in the middle of a sentence when I would never do that in my
normal writing,) made it kind of fun to experiment with my voice and
stylistic choices.
Hand in!