Some people say that I am "a good writer" (those who want to really tweak my ego say that I am a "very good" writer).  Sometimes, if they have an ambition to write or know someone who does, they ask me how I developed the skill.  Is it a gift – something one comes by naturally?  Are there tricks one can learn?  Is it mostly perspiration or inspiration?  I never know how to answer these questions, for I believe that everyone's experience is different.  Certain generalizations may apply, but I can relate only my personal journey – what drove me and what I learned along the way.  My journey began with a very early fascination with language, and that's probably true for all writers, but I suspect that the paths we take mat differ enormously.

I have searched my memory as far as I can, and I cannot recall when I began to learn to read – to sound out symbols and put meaning to them.  I have a vague recollection of riding in a car one day and realizing that I could make sense out of road signs.  It was an epiphany of sufficient impact that, though I'm sure it happened in my preschool years, I still remember it vividly, whereas many more childhood experiences have vanished altogether from memory.  Oddly enough, I cannot remember being formally taught to read before that.  I know I was read to, and I no doubt followed the symbols that were being read; however, it was more an unconscious process than formal instruction.  When I started school, I was already reading phonically, putting sound and sense together.  School just put what I was already doing into a more conscious process so that I could become better at it.

Does this mean that I was genetically better "wired" than most children are to relate external verbal symbols to internal images and thoughts?  Or does it mean that my environment activated and nurtured this process?  I don't know.  I do know that I must have had a very natural proclivity to concentrate, often unconsciously, on the symbols that I had to master to be able to read – for, astonishingly, I cannot remember being taught how to spell.  Yes, I remember spelling lessons and spelling tests, but it often seemed as if I already knew how the words should be spelled, even though English spelling is often not phonetic.  I might compare it to the ability of some people to play music by ear (something I cannot do and that is utterly beyond my understanding).  The numerous exceptions somehow registered and stuck, perhaps because I instinctively and subconsciously concentrated intently on the sound and shape of words.

This intimacy with language that I was developing was a mysterious, even mystical, process – but it also struck me as perfectly natural.  I was well into my adult life before I became aware that our ability – any human being's ability – to associate meanigless hieroglyphics with concepts and ideas (even with physical objects) is something beyond explanation, no matter how thoroughly we come to understand the human brain.  We may come closer to mapping where in our brains this process occurs, but how we do it will, I believe, remain a mystery forever.

I have yet to explain how any of this relates to writing.  The ability to extract (passively) meaning from symbols that are already written is a far cry from creating (actively) new thoughts and images by using these symbols.  We have already taken a step in this direction when we learn to speak, but this process is based completely on sound and primarily on imitation.  Some people are voracious readers but quite limited in their writing skills.  Many (I dare to say, most) people are much more adept and comfortable with oral expression than with writing.  The leap from reading or speaking to writing is considerable, and the leap to writing well is even more formidable.  The question, then, is why some individuals make the leap to writing well, while others write merely well enough to be understood (and some don't even get that far).

Part of the answer, I think, has to do with what I've mentioned above – a fascination with language.  I don't think I'm being presumptuous in suggesting that my early interest in the written word (and interest is an understatement because it was more like infatuation or enchantment) was, from the very start, the driving force behind my writing.  That enchantment, if you will, was coupled with a deep awareness that words are mystical.  They not only label things, but they have the power to externalize ideas and imaginings.  Like most children, I learned that reading could transport me to magical places, and, like most children, I used word-images to create magical places in my own head.  Most of us have rather rich and private internal lives, and children probably do so more than anyone because their external lives are relatively uncomplicated.  What a marvel it is, I thought, that we can externalize what's going on in our heads by writing it.

If suddenly realizing that I could read and make sense of road signs was an epiphany, finding out that I could give external form to what happened in my head, not just via fleeting speech but by the more permanent and tangible vehicle of writing, was an even more startling discovery.  At the age of nine, I found myself sitting at a manual typewriter painstakingly putting letters together into words, words into sentences, and sentences into a story – the externalization of a child's fantasy.  The specific event that prompted me to start is unimportant.  I started and kept at it for days.  I was in the grip of a creative urge, albeit a very immature and undisciplined one, that would not let go of me until I had finished what I had undertaken.  Even when I was finished (the product was a very bad story about the size of a novelette), the urge lingered.  I could do more, I knew, and I could do better.

Not everyone begins this way, and perhaps this first venture into extended and creative writing was not as abrupt as I remember it.  Surely I had done some writing by hand before that.  Yet this incident stands out because I remember how strong the desire to write was and how satisfying it was to weave the threads of language into the fabric of a story, even though I was fully aware that what I was doing did not even begin to compare to what others had done in the books I had read.  I was not discouraged by how far I had to go or intimidated by how much more skilled others had become, any more than a mountain climber is discouraged by the mountain or the skill of those who have already climbed it.  Their example was proof that it could be done.

Those early adventures with writing, then, began with a fascination with words and developed into a growing awareness of their power.  Reading showed me that other people had the power to evoke images and ideas in my mind.  This implied that I had the potential, through writing, to evoke images and ideas in the minds of others.  However, I couldn't expect anyone to read what I wrote unless I wrote well.  Thus, I realized early in the game that the writer's goal was to be understood, and achieving this goal means learning and following the rules.  For me, even as a beginner, writing was a game (in that it was an enjoyable pastime), but playing the game well involved work.  As with any game, I had the opportunity to be creative and iinnovative, but I also had an obligation to follow the rules and conventions of the game – to apply the established practices of grammar, mechanics, and usage.  I had to find new and creative ways to express myself within the confines of these conventions, to expand my vocabulary, to reach beyond what was merely correct and "adequate" for what was most effective.  It can be a lifelong task.

Becoming a really good writer requires much more effort than merely learning how to write correctly, and even correct writing poses a formidable challenge for many of us.  Unless we are driven by an almost insatiable urge to excel at it, few of us will endure long enough to prevail.  Reluctant to exert any more effort, we will come to some plateau at which we settle, never attempting to scale the peaks.  Every good writer has a vein of perfectionism that makes him or her reluctant to say, "Good enough."  (In the next part, however, we shall see how pushing perfectionism to an extreme can cause a dangerous sort of paralysis.)  For those who persist, the work doesn't seem as burdensome – in fact, it may not seem like work at all – if one retains a fascination with language itself, if (as one writer put it) one enjoys "hanging out with words and listening to them talk to each other."

Part Two of this series discusses some specific steps (and pitfalls) in a writer's journey.