My Story

If you were to describe my literacy history you would have to begin with a 1999 Chevy Caprice Classic. Everyday, during the thirty minute car ride to school, my mom would have me read aloud as she drove. Thus my evolution as a writer has been heavily influenced by my childhood reading. In truth I had read a lot before this period of time, but I count this time as the true beginning of my own experience because of what I read in the car. My mother made me read books which were very hard for me to read and to understand but they were fantastic! I read Around the World in Eighty Days and Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Sherlock Holmes and other less epic but equally beautiful books such as The Firework Makers Daughter. Reading these books at the time was very difficult and honestly I didn’t like it at the time but later I began to appreciate the stories. I loved their beautiful stories and different styles and, although I didn’t know it at the time, their underlying messages.

I found myself a lover of fiction. A story just wasn’t interesting unless it involved talking bears or giant battles fought over the beauty of a single woman. As I grew older and started reading for myself (outside of the car) I was instinctively drawn to epics. My love of fantasy went deeper than Harry Potter and his shallow wand waving. The stories I loved were full of deamons, fairies, vampires, sorceress, heroes and tales of unbelievable victory against seemingly undefeatable enemies. When I was younger I loved these stories simply for their great entertainment value but only recently have I begun to truly appreciate them for their meanings.

The first great epic I read was The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. These were fantastic stories but I took them as just that; stories. I failed to see their meaning or even stopped to consider they were written during WWII. The first embers of insight were stirred to life in my mind not from the Fire and Shadow of a Balrog from The Lord of the Rings, but by the story of a little girl who lived in Oxford. The Northern Lights (as it is called in England) was the first book of a trilogy written by Philip Pullman (who I discovered was also the author of The Firework Makers Daughter which I had loved as a child but failed to investigate). From the moment I began to read his words I was captured in his style and beauty of storytelling. Not only are Philip Pullman’s books entertaining in style they also confront political and religious issues upfront and bluntly. I read his trilogy several times and with each reading I discovered another layer. The way he addresses the dogma of religion yet maintains his remarkable story sets the questions in the readers mind openly. Pullman has even been praised by the Archbishop of Canterbury as a great author despite his anti-organized religion stance. Even though I was now considering the issues of the text more I was still unaware of the effect it was having on my own style of thinking and writing. However I soon would discover his influence through a very unexpected way.

At this point in my life my school classes were shaping my literacy history also. I had taken several English classes including creative writing and an expository essay writing class. The classes were quite enlightening in many different ways. My creative writing class allowed me to explore poetry and descriptive fiction while my expository essay class taught me the proper way to write college level essays. These classes were influential on my writing style however they did not affect me as deeply as my reading. An essay may affect the way we think through persuasive voicing but a story will always have more meaning to our soul.

One summer holiday I read many poems by Lord Byron and The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemmingway. I wanted to know more about Byron because I am after all named after him and what I found was surprisingly interesting and intriguing. I wanted to read the Hemmingway because I had heard another English class was reading it and some people thought it was good. I was surprised how much I liked Hemmingway’s short story and its contrast with the deep lush Byron. The two very different styles told their stories very well and I thought a great deal that summer about style, and what my own style was.

The next big step in my literary history came from a very unexpected source and land. Last year I moved to the Republic of Latvia for a one year long exchange program. I didn’t have access to television etc and thus I began to read a lot again. This time I was drawn to another great set of epics, the ancient Greek. When I read the Iliad and Odyssey for the first time I was very confused by the wording and grammatical style. The names of characters were baffling and sometimes very similar but after some researching into the story on Wikipedia I began to understand. The true transformation hit me when I read The Aeneid. The writing style is so unique, poetic and beautiful I found myself underlining passages of the book as inspiration for poems or casual reading. After reading these different books I decided that I wanted to express myself as well. The Tolkien, Pullman and Greek epics I had read were reemerging in my mind mixed with my own ideas and views. They reemerged in my psyche as The Book for Her.

The Book for Her was the name I gave to my own creation. I had decided to write my own epic tale. It did not begin like this however at all. One day I decided to stop at a book store and there I found a small hardcover bound book filled with blank pages. I bought it and took it home where I discovered the pages were already filled in my mind with my own chronicle; all I had to do was write. This book would be my pensive and allow my “thoughts will swirl, change and emerge, anew.” I began attentively at first. The writing was large, clear and formal. I wrote standard sentences using my school learned writing. Yet once I read what I had written I was dissatisfied. The story I had planned out was a botchy mixture, and in some cases direct duplication, of the epics I had read. I wanted to be unique. I wanted my own story to come from myself and speak of my thoughts not those of others. I went online and searched for fundamentals of epics. I discovered that almost all epics of all cultures and nations contain very similar core characters and beliefs which are know as archetypes. These are: the child, the hero, the eternal mother, the wise father, the trickster and the Mandela. I decided right then and there to break all of these archetypes in my story and create something totally new. I began writing simple ideas and bullet point principals. Slowly the general shape of the story became more solid. As I wrote the words seemed to come faster, the text was flowing from me. Soon each page was covered all over with tiny scrawling which would make an English teacher cringe yet the story unfolding was epic.

Once I had discovered my own style of writing it seemed effortless to pick up a pen and write a simple poem, a phrase or a counter argument. Through my reading and the messages from the epics of the past I have come closer to understanding my own style and have been greatly influenced. From reading in the car to writing in the poetic style of Vergil my literary history has developed from stories and styles. I feel though the greatest steps in my journey have come from self-realization. By changing your outlook at life and growing mature we all affect not just those around us but ourselves as well. One day I hope you will have the chance to read my story and understand this. Who knows, perhaps one day your children will read it to you during the car ride to school.