Just write well

The Saturday afternoons of my childhood were often spent at the library. No one seemed to notice or care that I wandered away from the Children's Room as soon as I polished off the Nancy Drew series. What an eleven-year-old set loose in the adult section can learn is rather amazing and often not stuff on the Catholic grammar school curriculum.

After library time, I walked three blocks to church for Confession, one of the seven sacraments, and there I dumped my weekly dirty laundry on a priest sure to absolve my sins of talking back to my parents, swearing, and occasionally eating a hot dog on Friday. I liked being in church as much as being in the library, but decades later, I left church behind.

Back then I had two besties, Pattie and Patsy. Pattie was all neat and tidy, good at school, practiced piano without complaint, and loved, I mean loved to write. So when I was with her,

we filled our spiral notebooks and read our entries aloud. We started a neighborhood paper, short lived, and we both wrote a novel, hers being far more lucid than mine.

Patsy wanted nothing to do with books or writing because she struggled with reading. Each evening her third grade teacher mother tutored her with zen like patience. It didn't take long before Patsy developed horse fever and riding depended on her academic progress. What a potent motivator. I caught this same fever, and riding became part of my life too.

I wrote, and rode through high school but senior year English nearly did me in. I was a townie and tracked into a top tier class designed for smart kids going to big name colleges. However, I needed every minute of this class because it was all about writing. I thought in one semester I'd become a real writer.

At the end of the term I felt bereft. I still didn't know enough. After our final class, I cornered my teacher and said what do I need to do to be a good writer? He looked bemused, gazed into the distance, and said, Just write well.

Within a few hours, he would be dead. His sage, though non-specific advice, sent me on a quest to do just as he had directed.

So Mr. S., I hope you have rested in peace all these long years. When I'm writing well,

I think of you and how your three small words encompass a heartbreaking, yet astonishing world that for me takes a lifetime of good reading and the daily click click click on my keyboard to enter.

Thank-you.