Week 10: First Writing Memories (Essay)

From an early age, my parents have little art books with stories in them that I wrote, but I don't have any solid memories of writing those. However, this last summer we went through a lot mine and my brother's old projects like that and it was really fun to read the little stories I had written.

 And through school, I learned cursive in third grade and had little papers and writing projects due throughout schooling. But to me, that was always just school work I had to do. I don't have any distinct memories of school writing before fourth grade.

My first memory of writing often outside of the required school work was when I began fourth grade.

In fourth grade, we had just moved to Colorado and  I was enjoying school for the first time in years. One of the teachers decided to set up a writing club for the fourth and fifth graders. I joined with a friend and once a week we would go to the club on our lunch time and talk about stories and write.

This is when I first thought that I wanted to write for a job when I grew up. I had read books all through my childhood (but that's a different essay). But with this writing club I wanted to make my own. I wanted to make other people feel the escape that I felt when reading.

One of the most vivid memories of this club was the first day, the teacher brought each of the students in the club a Lisa Frank pocket folder.For anyone who didn't go to school somewhere where there was a Lisa Frank craze, those folders and notebooks were like the riches of the class. They were designs of cartoon animals and sometimes people with bright rainbow colors. The girl with the most and best folders may as well have been the queen of the grade.

Lisa Frank Dalmatian Design. Source

The folder I got had two dalmatians with colored spots and paint brushes in their mouths. I'm pretty sure I still have that folder in a box somewhere. But anyways, one side of my folder was crammed full of poems and little stories and the beginnings of longer ones that I never finished. The other side had print outs of writing tips the teacher had given us.

I wrote so much that year that I now have permanent writing callouses on my hands for the first time and one of my fingers had a graphite tint there the pencil lead would rub it.

This is when my passion for writing really began. This is when I began collecting notebooks and folders that would all have random scribbles and poems and stories. While I know I did write earlier. For me, this club in fourth grade was when it all started.