The Telling of a Story: My Literacy Narrative

1

Oh, so what
grade do you
want to
teach?

When people hear that I’m an English major with

a concentration in Creative Writing and intend to
pursue a master’s degree, they typically assume that
I want to be a teacher.

2

However, I am not so much with dealing with children or

being in social situations for prolonged periods of time. I
am somewhat critical and very much a perfectionist by
nature (and therefore have a not-so-secret love of
correcting people’s grammar), so I would strongly consider
going into the editing and publishing side of things part-
time, but what I really want to be is a novelist. Not just any
kind of writer. Not a journalist or a freelance writer or
anything like that—a novelist.

3

Because I want to be able to inspire in people the kind of

wonder and escapism that books have brought into my life, to
create far-off fantasy realms and to breathe magic and stardust
into ordinary words, giving the depth of emotionality to
characters whose flesh is ink so that they may become manna for
a reader. Because storytelling is an art form, one that has existed
since the dawn of time. It breaks cultural barriers, weaves and ties
many forms of literature together through allusion. It is one of the
very few constants across all cultures throughout history,
whether they were literate or passed stories down through the
generations by word-of-mouth. And I think that’s beautiful.

4

Storytelling has always fascinated me, even before I could

read. One of my earliest memories is of myself at the age of
four, sitting on top of the yellow Formica-clad kitchen counter
of my childhood home amid various clutter and the lingering
smell of spicy food. It was just after dinner, and my uncle was
visiting, as he was wont to every night. And as was my custom, I
had climbed up onto the counter with a dun-paged and cover-
peeling copy of select Brothers Grimm fairytales and insisted
that he stay until I “read” him at least one story. I am told it was
usually not limited to just one story, and if it was, it was a very
long and involved one.

5

In school, I was always the one with the most

Accelerated Reader points (I was the first and am
currently the only person in the history of the school
to have gotten more than 1,000) and I was reading at
the 12th grade level in elementary school. My ISAT
reading scores were quite literally off the charts one
year.

6

When I was in the fourth grade, I took a packet of

loose-leaf paper held together at the top left hole
punch by a lobster-claw clasp and started writing a
book about a set of orphaned twins and what I believe
was an evil hermit, if I remember correctly. I never got
very far with that, and in eighth grade, I started what
was meant to be a prompt-based short story for
English class and ended with a work that was over 300

pages long and told by multiple different perspectives.

7

It was rejected by two or three literary agents, and then I read it again

and realized that it was awful. I had gone through a rather
embarrassing Twilight phase when I began writing it, so two of the
main protagonists were vampires and one of them had also been bit by
a werewolf in childhood. Aside from that, there were plot holes galore
and a string of unnecessary characters so long that some of them were
not adequately represented and then many of them were simply killed
off so they could be gotten rid of. The setting, the characters, and
the plot were all much too spread out to make for a good story. The
dialogue was adequate in some areas, funny, clever and witty in others,
and awkward or ridiculous everywhere else. It was a great learning
experience for me. As in, I learned quite a lot about what not to do.

8

The year after that I was involved in an awful car accident where I

accrued the obvious cuts, bruises, and sprains, but stiches and
staples and broken bones, collapsed lungs, a Diffuse Axonal
Traumatic Brain Injury (DAI, or TBI), and a coma. I was in the
Intensive Care Unit for a week, and I had to learn how to walk again
because while I remembered how, the muscle memory was not all
there. My eyesight and hand-eye coordination had also suffered,
but when I came home and tried to fix my blurry eyes to my computer
screen, to individually locate and tap out each letter of a word, I was
scared because I thought I couldn’t write anymore. I thought that
that one failed attempt was all I’d ever accomplish.

9

I wanted a fresh start, so I decided to start something new.

Something that had been important to me for a really long
time, a storyline that I had thought about for so long and so
often that imagining different plot points and character
psychology were a part of my daily life.

And I am still working on it today. I’ve decided to scrap
what I have and start from the beginning again. Currently I’m
doing some research, working out kinks in the plot, and
focusing on themes and motifs, etc. I want to use before I start
the rewriting process. I’m taking my first creative writing class at
DePaul this quarter, and I’m already learning a lot.

10

Pur ardua

surgo…

Latin to English translation:
Through adversity I will rise.