lessons from the young writer

Funny how a little fellow can teach me so much.  Can bring me back to the person that I am. 

Jordan wrote a story the other day.  He was mighty proud because it was over 600 words (according to the word count on the computer).  And as my family and I gathered around to listen to him read it to us, I thought, here's my little writer.  He doesn't have to wait for one day to be a writer; he's already a writer.  An amazing writer.  At six years old.  And I reminded him of that: you're a great writer, babe.  (Yep, he's my babe.)  Keep writing.

That day, I learned these things from Jordan:

(1) Be proud of your voice.  He read that story with such conviction.  He didn't let the giggles from the room sway him; he kept on reading.   

(2) Tell the stories you want to tell, and in the way you want to tell them.  There's always basketball in Jordan's stories.  But he can tell a basketball story in many different ways. 

(3) Just write.  Let your creativity flow.  When I got to my mom's house on the 4th, Jordan was on the computer typing away.  When I went over to say hello to him, he told me that he was writing a story and I couldn't read it until he was done.  Then, he went back to his writing.  He was in a zone.  No one could disturb him. 

(4) Just write and the story will come.  Although Jordan finally learned to write in sentences, using punctuation marks, he still doesn't do paragraph breaks.  So, the story was one long paragraph.  But that long paragraph had a story.  It had characters.  It had dialogue.  It had conflict.  It had a resolution.  And it even had a lesson.  Patience.  Pretty amazing, huh?

(5) Know what you love and do it.  At six, Jordan knows he loves to read and write.  And he loves basketball.  Sometimes, we have to pull him away from the computer or from all the notebooks that he has compiled.  (He started writing journals when he was four.)  Sometimes, we have to tell him that he can't keep dribbling the ball or spend so many hours practicing his shots.  That he has to do something else.  Sometimes, we try to get him to play other sports or play games with the other kids.  But, he's adamant.  His love is basketball.  It's the only sport he wants to play.  And he loves to read and write.  Playing games with other kids is just not his thing.  It bores him.  He loves to create stories.  That's what he wants to do.  And the other day, I thought, why not just let him?  I realized that what you want to be when you're young, before all the pressures and influences of life, before you've been disappointed and told you can't do that, is really a reflection of your true self.  The purest, truest YOU. 

When I was young, I wanted to be a writer.