“Let the Writing Begin!”

By

Gerry Niskern

Have you ever thought about writing your memoir?

A small group of people gathered at the Acacia Library this week to begin writing theirs.

They are going to enjoy the excitement of describing their lives, the people in their lives and the events that they want others to know about. They will take their readers on an exciting ride as they detail their experience and thoughts.

This group will paint a picture of their lives by showing what characters, places and events were like. And they will all this with the wonderful world of words!

What can I say about words? First of all, thank you, thank you, thank you to the first people who learned to communicate with words. And then thank you again to the scholars who learned to write them down in various forms to be read by everyone.

This evolved over thousand of years, but to each one of us who discovered that some little squiggly lines in our first school books were actually words; and those words told a story, it was a miracle!

At least it was to me as a six year old first grader, in a little country school in West Virginia.  We were allowed to take our readers home and read the next chapter. Well, it’s hard to believe, but I was so thrilled with the story of Dick, Jane and Spot, that I finished the book.

The next day when I excitedly told Miss Mary Jane Crowe, my teacher, that I loved reading the whole book, I was soundly scolded for reading more than I was instructed. Looking back, I’m guessing that she didn’t have a lot of books for us to read and that reader was supposed to last quite a while.

Fortunately, that reprimand didn’t deter me from being an avid reader all my life. Later on, I carried stacks of books from the first Phoenix Library every week while growing up and continue to read everything I can.

I do have to say, though, that the only thing better than reading words,  is writing them to create a story!