When I was in second grade, I wrote a play. It
was very short, mind you. It was not easy to manipulate my number 2 pencil over
the rough construction paper I had to use, and my attention span at age 8 was
minimal. I showed it to my teacher and she let me recruit several classmates to
perform it for our class. The thrill it gave me to hear them speaking my words
was intoxicating!
I think that is when it happened. Writing got
into my blood. I’ve been addicted ever since.
The same year, I asked for a diary for
Christmas. I tore through my presents, tossing all aside until I found it. The
cover was pastel pink and the pages creamy ivory. Pure magic! I wrote in it
almost daily, usually in crayon. How I loved jotting down my life on those
pages!
Santa brought me a diary for the next three
years. I wrote in all of them but I felt less and less satisfaction. I needed
something stronger to recapture that original thrill. I began writing a mystery
à la Nancy Drew. I finished my first chapter and showed it to my Aunt Ronnie.
About halfway through the chapter, she burst out laughing. I had put nothing
comedic in my story. What did she find so funny? (Probably the secondary
character who happened to be bicycling around town with her grandfather’s will
in her front shirt pocket.) I grabbed my novel and stomped away, crushed.
My father was always saying, “Don’t waste your
life; be a doctor.” I decided he was right. I gave up on writing.
Then, in ninth grade English, I discovered
that I loved to write papers: essays, reports, and even research papers. The
excitement of finding the right words! The giddy sensation of pouring out my
thoughts through my fingertips! I did my best to keep my secret. Of course, I
couldn’t hide it from my English teacher. She complimented my work. She gave me
As. I ignored her.
Then my Physical Science teacher assigned a
research paper using the scientific method. The craving to be creative was
unstoppable. My paper ended up in iambic pentameter with the last word of every
other sentence rhyming. I knew I would get an F. I couldn’t help myself. The
joy of finding rhymes for words like “voltaic” overwhelmed me. How thrilling it
felt to read aloud the songlike beat of my hypothesis!
I vowed to myself I would never do that again.
I didn’t want to damage my grade point average and ruin my chances for being
accepted into a good pre-med program.
I stuck to my vow until my junior year in
college. I was taking a test for a history course; it was a single essay:
Explain the European scramble for Africa . I
could have passed this one easily, but I couldn’t stop myself from comparing
Europe’s colonization of Africa to a chef
scrambling eggs. The professor asked me if I was taking drugs (no). He thought
I was making fun of his life’s interest. To me, I was glorifying it with
metaphor and analogy.
“I have to stop this,” I told myself as I
mailed story-like letters and handmade greeting cards to friends and family.
Those people wrote back and said, “You should be a writer!” What did they know?
I gave up on the doctor idea and went into
teaching. I met a great guy and got married. I had a baby daughter, who turned
out to be profoundly autistic. She became the focus of my life. Her needs
consumed my time. I had little left for anything else.
Then, one March day in 2005, that old urge
came to me again. I put a pen to paper. I only had 45 minutes to myself each
day and I wrote like crazy. I did this every day for months. I realized I had a
novel in progress. I rushed through my chores and skipped lunch to add more
time for writing to my day. I set my alarm for 4:30 in the morning, so I could
write before my daughter awoke. I needed to write. I needed to be me.
Six years later, I became a published author.
I couldn’t fight my yearning to write, and I’m glad. I wish I had given in
sooner. I could have studied creative writing or literature in college. Maybe,
rather than starting my career at age 46, I could have a ton of published books
under my belt right now. So, I guess the moral of the story is, if you love to
write and you are good at it, don’t waste your life trying to be anything else.
Victoria
Ferrante is the mother of two children with autism and the author of Hope: A
Novel.
Learn more about Victoria
