My Story

Mandy Deffendall
Dr. Carter and Dr. Adkins
English 697
September 16, 2009
Writing Assignment 2

My Story

Stories are all around us waiting to be told. They’re in the trees, at the train station, in the class room, at the shopping mall, waiting to be discovered. Characters are sitting next to you, standing in line in front of you at the supermarket. New settings are being painted in the sky with each sunrise and sunset. Dialogues unfold at coffee shops, bars, dinner tables. My eyes see the world through a writer’s perspective, and I live my life searching out these stories.

I became fascinated with stories when I was a small child. I’d perch myself of mother’s lap, and she’d take me on adventures to the jungle, to the woods, rivers, mountains, cities, places I had never been. I’d meet people in those stories who I would have otherwise never met. The words she read painted pictures in my mind that I could get lost in for hours.

By age five, I was already writing my own adventures. I wanted to find the stories, and I wanted to tell them. I no longer only wanted to go on expeditions; I wanted to lead them. I wanted to paint with words.

In the first grade, I got my chance. I was recognized by my school as the “Young Author” of the year, and I got to read my story in front of my entire elementary school, and later to members of the community. My story made them smile; it made them laugh. I saw that my words had the power to elicit emotions; they had the power to impact. I fell in love with words.

I spent the rest of my elementary career searching out new ways to tell stories. I’d read book after book, looking at how different authors used words, looking at the different kinds of stories they told, figuring out what made the difference between books I liked and books I didn’t. By fourth grade, I started writing my first novel, a ghost story called Full Moon at Midnight, finishing it the same time I finished the sixth grade.

Then I started junior high school and suddenly I was surrounded by 1,000 new characters. I listened to their stories across the lunch table, at their lockers, on the basketball and volleyball courts. I found stories written on the bathroom walls and notes passed back and forth in math class. At night I wrote dialogues with my friends on AIM. I kept a journal, writing it all down.

In junior high I was also introduced to other kinds of writing: research papers, academic and argumentative essays, reports. I discovered that my words had even more power. They had power to change minds, to change the stories of history and society on things such as race, gender, class, and ecology, and to keep alive the stories of the Holocaust, slavery, inequalities.

I also began reading more non-fiction, not just for research and to gain facts and information, but also to look at how other authors formulated their essays. I looked at how they constructed their arguments, how they proved their points, how they reached their audiences. I read as a reader and also as a writer.

Non-fiction wasn’t the only new thing I was reading in junior high. After listening and falling in love with the Dave Matthews Band, I discovered that music was full of stories. I could read a song just like I could read a poem. Dave Matthews’s lyrics painted pictures in my mind much in the same way the stories my mother read to me as a child did, and drew out emotions deep within me that I didn’t even know I had. I started looking at art the same way, as a story. I read the colors, the brush stroke, the shapes. I read many other things, movies, people, situations. I was discovering more and more that I could find a story in anything.

My literacy practices continued through high school and even up through today. I still see the world in the same way I did as a child: as a writer. Every morning I wake up and go for a run. As I run, I constantly scan the trees, the houses, the people, the neighborhood for a story. I also use this time to think about whatever stories I am currently writing. I plan out the plots, develop my characters, think of places they could go and conversations they could have. This planning continues through my shower and my one hour drive to Commerce each morning. I do this so when I sit down to write, I already know where I’m going. Of course I still do many other kinds of writing. I write for class. I write essays, notes, blogs, etc., and I also still write for fun. I still read, a lot more since I started graduate school, but I still read for fun also. I read for knowledge. I read for fun. I read to write.

The biggest change in my literacy practices from a child until now, is that I now not only write, but I teach others to write as well. I teach an English 100 lab, and I am also a tutor at the writing center. So all morning I think about writing, and all day at work, I talk about writing, and I get to read what other people are writing. I also get to help people find an audience for their writing as the assistant editor of The Mayo Review, Texas A&M University-Commerce’s literary review.

Of course I read and write many other things as well; we all do: stop signs, shirt sizes, facebook pages, text messages, speedometers, directions, clocks, ingredients, nutrition information, backs of medicine bottles, labels at the grocery store, warning, notices, e-mails, newspapers, job postings, twitter, blogs, movies, T.V. shows, billboards, magazines, advertisements, Myspace, t-shirts, hats, pictures, people, transcripts, class schedules, subtitles, etc. The list goes on. But no matter what I am reading or writing, or why I am reading or writing it, be it to gain or pass on knowledge or information, or be it to communicate, I always read and write to tell a story. I don’t “do” literacy; I live it. It is my world. I see through a writer’s perspective. Each day, no matter what I do, I gather material for my next story, whatever that may be.