On Writing, a Reflection

One of the exercises that we did the first night of the "Teaching" class was a reflection on our "literacy experiences" - what sort of things led us along the path to being interested in words, books, and the teaching of English in general. Along those same lines, I've had the image of a wood shed popping up a lot lately, when I have thought about by writing path. Enough so that I figured I would throw this out there

I have had an interest in writing for close to 20 years, if not longer (and if I had paid attention, I wouldn't have felt the need to try going into Computer Science when I first started college... let's just say I could get the concepts or write the code - but depending on the language I couldn't always do them at the same time).

One of the earlier experiences was with another kid who lived down the street from me, a year or two younger, named Charlie. We had some similar interests, and got along well, and he had a wood shed/storage shed in his backyard. This wasn't one of those you might find in a Home Depot parking lot these days, nor was it a tilt up metal-shed-in-a-box. As I think about it, it had the charm and appearance of an older southern storage building: faded gray wood planks, slat built so threads of light could sneak in through cracks between the boards. I think it had a dirt floor, as well, which added to the rustic feel.

Back in the day, one of the features that came out regularly in the Sunday papers was a feature called "Mini Pages" - a feature like a small newspaper for kids. That triggered an interest to try and develop some kind of product, like a neighborhood newspaper designed for and written by kids. Charlie and I talked a lot about the project, even going through some of the basic design elements (conceptually - this was years before computer design/layout application were both common, and accessible).

The project never really developed - like most things a kid gets interested in, they tend to fizzle out or get overtaken by other pursuits - but it was a fun thing to explore. If we had access to a computer (instead of just a typewriter) or something like PageMaker or similar software, who knows. It may not have gone much further, but it would have still been fun...