Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/picking-strawberries-gathering-eggs-and-dancing--or-how-i-learned-to-write/5020498/
As I copy a section of a manuscript onto the computer from my longhand (I write everything first in longhand), I glance up at the computer screen. To my horror and disgust there is an almost continuous red line under everything I have just typed! I try to catch myself before I get too frustrated and upset: after all, I cannot type and never could spell! So how did I ever become a writer?In school I struggled to read and write. In fact, I really did not read until my teens, when I learned by reading the comics in our local paper, much to the chagrin of my two teacher-parents. In looking back at my school years, I believe there were two primary reasons I could not read or write in school. For the first 12 years of my life I grew up on a beautiful farm in the border country between England and Wales. My life was full of picking sweet, plump blackberries and wild strawberries growing along the thick green hedgerows, smelling white violets and wild roses beside the meandering footpaths, and watching men dipping the sheep in the stream on the cool, long summer evenings. I loved helping ...