I Am So Popular: Word Up

I have taught many children over the past twenty years. One of my favorite questions to ask is, “What’s your passion?” I don’t think we ask kids this often enough as we sometimes try to guess or, worse, impose our own ideas on them. Helicopter parents rushing their offspring to music lessons, sports practices, and summer camps in the hope of molding them into a preconceived notion of what success “should” look like.

In my own childhood, there were fewer options. This was true for a couple of reasons. In general, there just weren’t as many overly structured extracurricular activities out there. More specific to my own story, there wasn’t money to afford lessons and, with eight siblings, resources were limited in other ways—a lack of time and attention available to hyper-nurture us.

And then there was that old children-are-to-be-seen-and-not-heard thing that my father was so fond of. Any shrieking, horseplay, or other noisemaking antics shut down the minute his car pulled up to the house after work. “Daddy’s home,” was code speak to sit down and shut up. The quiet requirement also applied whenever a new baby arrived, which was just about every year or so. “Shhhh,” we’d hear, “the baby’s sleeping.”

And though I would go on, for many years and through countless therapy sessions, looking back futilely wishing things had been different, more open, more permissive, and infused with more opportunities, I now see certain unintended benefits to what once seemed like a dearth of so very many things.

Silence imposed pushed me toward words. If I could not speak them as freely and as often as I wished, still I could explore them. This I did with a passion so voracious you’d think that reading and writing were as necessary as breathing for me to stay alive. From the minute I could sound out words on the page, and from the other minute when I learned how to put together my own words, I was off and running.

Summer in particular carries me back to hours and hours spent curled up either with a book or a steno pad and a super sharp No. 2 pencil. When reading, I’d travel to other lands, centuries, planets even, dizzy with the excitement inspired by what, in reality, amounted to a series of black ink strokes on white pages. Pure magic I thought—and still do—that one human can take thoughts, translate them into characters and ideas, and in doing so transport their recipients to vivid landscapes they likely would not have visited on their own.

Times I traded out reading for writing, the universe—any universe—was mine to create. Such power in this act. And long before I learned the words to describe the concept for chaos vs. control, I was both thrilled and calmed by the power of omnipotence impossible in the reality of my day-to-day life but mine for the taking as I scribbled away, creating characters and sealing their fates any way I saw fit.

Though fiction was my first love, my own fate would find me faring better, at least professionally, with the truth. Of the ten books I have written, six are non-fiction and four are novels. Five of the former have been published, and the sixth will be released soon. Of the latter three have not made it past the eyes of friends who kindly indulged me, reading the end product, urging me on. Beyond that, they sit unbound on a shelf, collecting dust.

The lack of commercial success with the fiction never got me down. This latest novel may or may not be the one that—after nineteen years of trying—finds its way between hard covers embellished with author photo and ISBN. And if it does not, I might allow myself a few moments of self-pity, but there will be no regret.

I recently read about a study with results that did not surprise me. We humans, the study goes, find far more happiness in experience than possessions. Not that you would know it considering all the things we race to acquire. But when asked to really contemplate sources of joy, respondents revealed what I was accidentally lucky enough to conclude for myself long ago. This, too, might relate back to a childhood in which there were so many things we could not have.

I remember, every year, the arrival of the latest Sears catalogue, and thumbing through it, composing a Christmas wish list of item after item there was no hope of receiving. As a young adult, I often overcompensated, stretched beyond my reach, used credit cards I had no business having to gift myself tangible goods as some proof of… what?

I’m long past those days, and could pack up all that I own (or merely leave it behind) in a handful of hours. And if I could only take, say, twenty things with me? Let’s see—the dogs (of course), some good walking shoes, the knitting supplies and the words. I’d have to rationalize the purchase of an eReader to allow myself bringing along a few thousand books. And I’d want to include the laptop or, in lieu of that, an endless supply of paper and ink.

When I ask children to tell me about their passion, sometimes they hesitate. Then one might call out, “Skateboarding.” There will be videogame fanatics, aspiring athletes, musicians. The time that stands out most is when a little girl quietly announced she liked to sing. I asked if she wanted to demonstrate and her timidity dissipated as she stood and belted out a song. This was before American Idol, and her passion was not prompted, I don’t think, by a desire to garner fame for her voice. She just wanted to sing.

I have stuck with the fiction despite achieving “success” of a commercial variety because this has remained an opportunity to sing as that little girl did that day— without self-consciousness, just belting it out, giving voice to a call inside of her, not caring what anyone thought. My fiction is such a far cry from so much of the writing I have pursued - the marketing work, the women’s magazine fluff, the commercial website content. Much of that has been fun, and even the tedious work has paid the bills and fueled the experiences—travel, good restaurants, concerts—that the researchers say bring us happiness.

But when I am home alone with the keyboard, inventing worlds and the people in them and the adventures they take, the thrill is as great as it ever was and the magic remains. I steal time from the rest of my life, all the appointments and deadlines and demands of what must be done if one wants to live a ife that includes a roof, food, utilities. I relish in the passion of these stolen moments.

Other moments stolen are designated for the gift of words—written, spoken—offered by others. Their thoughts shared, their wisdom imparted, their insights carefully shaped into sentences delivered for the sole purpose of triggering a connection with others.

In a few days, I will hop on another plane and then another and thirty hours later I will touch down in a place where I won’t understand a single word being spoken around me. I will travel with one small suitcase into which I will tuck precious few articles of clothing and an absolute minimum of toiletries. Beyond that, I’ll do what I always do—bring along far more books than I can read, and notebooks into which I will pour the details of my adventure. I will sit on the beach and in the cafes and listen to all the words I do not understand, and read and write the ones I can. Because when we are lucky enough to know our passion and to make time to enjoy it, then we are really singing, and how I love to sing.

Spike Gillespie will be back in September. She’s teaching some writing workshops soon. Details are here. Email spikegillespie@gmail.com for more details.