Reach

The Works of Melissa Danko

A Creative Writer

I stared down at the green and white checkered cover.  “The Shurley Method” it said, in big bold letters, with “English Made Easy” swooped underneath it in cursive.  My teacher Mrs. Redder explained that this would be our English book for the year.  Before fourth grade, I didn’t care much about grammar.  I had always been a spelling girl, put into the advanced spelling groups in my classes to struggle with words like “algae” and “foreign.”  Parts of speech were the last thing on my mind, and memorizing prepositions sounded almost as bad as missing recess.

Mrs. Redder explained that we’d be using The Shurley Method to help solidify our understanding of nouns, verbs, and other famous parts of speech—none of which sounded all that interesting to me.  She pulled out the overhead and her Vis-A-Vis markers and projected sentences onto the screen.  We began the slow, methodical process of labeling those sentences until we could hardly read them anymore.

“The kitten plays with string,” we all read together.  “What plays with string? Kitten…subject noun.”  Mrs. Redder labeled “SN” above the word kitten and we all did the same in our books.  “What is being said about the kitten?” we asked in unison.  “Kitten plays…verb.”  A “V” was written above the word plays.  “With…preposition.  With what?  String…object of the preposition.”  Finally, we concluded with “The…article.”

This went on and we slowly worked our way through adverbs and adjectives up to transitive verbs and other parts of speech that most adults probably don’t know exist and that fourth graders certainly have no interest in.  However, I was interested.  I found myself enjoying this method, loving whoever Shurley was, and getting really good at identifying predicate nouns and indirect objects.  Whenever Mrs. Redder asked for students to lead the class through sentence labeling, my hand shot up.  But as entertaining as it was to label these sentences, I couldn’t resist the jingles.  In the back of our books was a section of jingles to help us remember the parts of speech; we sang about nouns to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” and clapped our hands as we chanted about adjectives modifying nouns or pronouns.  Everyone’s favorite was the preposition jingle, which allowed us to recite all forty-nine prepositions.  “Preposition, preposition starting with an A!  Aboard, about, above…across, after, against,” we all shouted, all the way through the alphabet to “with, within, without.”

I don’t know what it was about these grammar exercises that reeled me in, but I soaked it up quickly and never forgot.  This early emphasis on grammar and sentence structure impacted the way I continued to write, often placing my attention on the way sentences sounded over what they actually said.  I became attracted to writing because it was something I could control.  I had little control over math problems or relaying historical facts, but with writing I could twist the nouns, verbs, and adjectives—and later, the flowing of words, organization of thoughts, and construction of sentences—to create lyrical masterpieces.

In seventh grade, as I was sitting in English class, my teacher Mrs. Tramontin announced that we would be keeping daily writing journals.  As she passed out brand new journals to each of us—the ones with the classic black and white patterned covers that I had always loved—she explained that each day we would be required to write a couple pages in it.  Sometimes the topic would be determined by her, and other days we would be allowed to write freely.  I, like many of the other students in my class, let out a sigh of relief after hearing that we’d be allowed free topics.  I told myself that of course it would be easier—no restrictions to hold me back.  I would be able to let my ideas flow nonstop.  Out from my mind, through my pencil, and onto my journal pages.  As I got my pencil ready for our first journal entry, excited to breeze through my first free topic writing, I froze as I realized I had no idea what to write about.  I ran through ideas in my mind, shooting down each one faster than the one before.  They all sounded so stupid, and I struggled to see the importance in any of my potential topics.  I tried to squeeze out a couple sentences, but quickly erased what I had written.  The wording was all wrong.  I didn’t like how it sounded, and I was stuck yet again.  As I glanced around the room, I saw my classmates scribbling away in their journals.  How was it so easy for them?  There was no way I could jump into any random idea like that, not when it wasn’t planned.  This journal writing was not so easy after all.

I found myself relishing the days that Mrs. Tramontin asked us to respond to a prompt or answer a specific question.  Sure, I could write about my plans for the weekend or what I thought about the chapters we had read for homework.  Having an idea handed to me stopped me from judging whether it was a good topic or not.  I simply wrote. Of course, I struggled to write the volume that my peers were able to churn out; I wrote each sentence with careful attention, placing the words exactly as I wanted them.  Although I never wrote as much as my friends, I embraced not having to worry about whether my topic was worthy of being written.   Despite the fact that I was a mere twelve years old, I was afraid of writing something that didn’t matter, something that wasn’t polished and perfect.  I was—and still am—a self-proclaimed perfectionist, and this always held me back when I was asked to write creatively.

I felt mild panic set in when I heard “creative writing,” because my imagination did not run wild like the minds of many others.  However, I soon discovered my own kind of creativity.  My imagination allowed me to explore different ways of stating the same idea, emphasizing different parts with rearrangement of the words and punctuation, but it failed to offer me grand ideas for novels or beautiful poetry.  I loved digging deeper into texts, analyzing complex writing, and forming my own ideas about other ideas, but those were all based on something pre-existing.  I felt much more comfortable with at least a minor guideline for where my thoughts should be headed.  While many found this restricting, I found it comforting.

My junior year of high school I decided to take AP English Language.  I had enjoyed writing in high school, as the majority of what I was asked to write involved responding to literature or researching hot-button issues.  I knew that AP Language would be more of the same, with a special focus on the way language affects meaning—my favorite.  As I sat in class, my teacher Ms. Stahl explained a new kind of writing exercise we’d be doing.  “Sentence combining,” she called it.  Scanning over the worksheet she had handed out, I realized that it consisted of a brief twenty-sentence story, with sentences grouped into two’s.  Our job was to combine the grouped sentences together using different kinds of punctuation.  Leaving a sentence by itself was allowed, as long as we incorporated its partner sentence seamlessly into the next group.  We weren’t supposed to go crazy with it though, sprinkling semicolons and dashes haphazardly across the page.  The focus was on making the sentences flow smoothly without losing any of the original meaning.  I didn’t think much about the assignment, and put it in my folder to take home.

When I sat down to actually work on it later that night, I found myself enjoying this thing that I had carelessly cast aside as a mere homework assignment.  It seemed like the possibilities for the combinations of sentences and punctuation were endless.  I had never played with sentence structure like that before and I was completely drawn to it.  This was my kind of creativity.  I experimented with dashes—they quickly became my favorite.  I used semicolons; I was excited to try out the kind of punctuation that many people leave alone.  I separated pairs of sentences, forcing one to join another group of two while one stood alone to give me that ever so powerful short sentence.  I knew short sentences could pack a punch.  Punctuation and sentence length became my two new loves and even though I was no expert at using these tools, I was not afraid to try.  I spent hours on these assignments—much longer than I should have—but I was having so much fun.  I came up with multiple ways of saying the same story, placing emphasis on different parts depending on their placement in the sentence and how they were surrounded by punctuation.

I quickly realized that the way something is said rivals what is actually said.  An idea will stand out for its brilliance, but it will also stand out when it is brilliantly put.  I became drawn to the latter.  The sentence combining exercises gave me ideas and asked me to rearrange them; it felt like I was contributing very little of myself, but in reality I was pouring myself into it.  Other students felt this was a lack of control, but I felt completely in control.  I was creative in my manipulation and my construction, something that I had never felt with actual creative writing.

I have now realized that writing, “creative” or not, always provides me an outlet to be original and imaginative.  I strive to produce ideas that are clear but also unique, and I work to say them in ways that make people think.  Emphasizing different parts of a sentence can give new meaning to an idea, and this is powerful.  With careful attention to detail, I typically write solid first drafts, because I commit to every word I place on the page.  When a phrase comes to me, I write it down immediately, for fear of losing the wording and the style.  If my readers appreciate the way that I have worded a sentence or the way that I have played with punctuation to keep things interesting, then I am satisfied.  Although it took me awhile to see it, I am a creative writer.  Just not in the typical sense.

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