Get started writing

I was thrilled to be invited by Connie Berg to co-present a “Get Started Writing” workshop for members of the public at the Tea Tree Gully Library.  The aim of this two-hour workshop was to introduce participants to writing by “doing”, and give them some tools and hopefully some inspiration to continue on with it.

Ironically, I was nominated to run the section on poetry, for which I have great appreciation but little compositional skill.  I had enormous fun putting together a haiku worksheet, and a shared poetry-writing exercise, which was enjoyed with amazing and occasionally hilarious results.  Participants then wrote some of their own fiction, and had the opportunity to share their work with a supportive audience.  Anyone who’s engaged with a good group of writers knows how enormously rewarding and encouraging this can be. 

But life is a wonderful and mysterious thing, and the workshop held a surprise for me.

I was surprised at the late arrival of lady who had both the face and the surname of my Grade 3 teacher, Mrs R.  Could it be my most fondly remembered teacher?  She had been flaming-haired and vivacious, passionate about imagination, about learning.  I remember, as the quiet, strange girl that I was, that this was the teacher who showed me that if you put in extra effort, you can produce something good.  Something beautiful.  Something that you can be proud of.  Even though I spent only two-thirds of the year in her classroom, it was a pivotal time in my learning.  She encouraged my reading, but even more importantly, she switched me on to writing, neatly and well. 

I remember the shining feeling of pride seeing two gold stars and a smiley stamp on what must have been one of my very first works of imaginative fiction.  I clung to that feeling when I was suddenly uprooted to a distant, hot land.  I changed schools five more times in the next five years, but the memory of her and what she had taught me kept me engaged with learning, even in desolate emotional terrain.  I had wondered since whether I might ever meet her again, and hoped one day to thank her.

And yes, thirty years later, in this community writing workshop, it was indeed Mrs R.  She remembered the sad, quiet girl I had been at age 7.  When the class ended, she handed me an acrostic poem she had written for me.  This beautiful, expressive, expansive teacher – who’d had no idea of the impact she’d had on my life - had seen a spark inside a quiet child and coaxed it to a flame.  She was rewarded all these years later by seeing that girl transformed, and that flame now blazing as passion for writing and the joy of sharing it with others.  

The significance of this moment was not lost on me.  It seems like more than just coincidence that I reconnected with the teacher who taught me to want to write well, in that same space – the sphere of writing, of sharing learning, of getting started on the thing that calls you.  It affirmed in both of us the power of sharing what you’re passionate about, in a moment of unexpected, exquisite denouement.

So, the moral to this story, if there is one, is to get started.  Get started writing.  Or painting.  Or singing.  Or whatever it is that lights you up, get started doing that.  Do it often, and share the joy that it brings you.  It creates a space, a magical chink through which all sorts of unimagined rewards can enter your life.

What are you waiting for?   

Light it up... by young_einstein @ Flickr