Today is the National Day On Writing Day. I just learned about this special day this morning. I started a new thing at school, as I welcome the students in the door every morning. I greet them with the National Day of “whatever.” Besides being National Day on Writing day it is also National Chicken and Waffles Day. There are several others. International Octopus Day was a whole lot of fun. Octopi are amazing creatures, and I got to meet a Pacific Giant Octopus personally at the San Antonio Aquarium a few years back. She was absolutely amazing to spend time with. Her strength impressed me, and her curiosity was enchanting. She was very interested in the hair on my arms. She would use her suckers to grab and pull the hair, and a few times she yanked a couple out. I have a high tolerance for discomfort, so letting her explore was all in the experience.

Okay back to writing. The National Day on Writing. I’m going to write about writing. At least I will write about my writing. It is a practice I enjoy engaging in. I feel I am improving, just by engaging in the practice of writing. However, I am not a great judge of my writing. I tend to think it rambles, sucks, and communicates very little. Yet I continue in the practice as I feel better for having performed the task. Writing really lightens the load within my headspace. It is far less expensive than paying a therapist to listen to me, so there is that. Here goes…

I failed penmanship in grade school. My handwriting is pretty awful. My cursive writing was an incoherent mess. I believe my issue with writing was more developmental than cerebral. I started school a year earlier than most of my peers. I turned five around the beginning of the second quarter. I had half-day kindergarten as well. What made writing the most traumatic were my 3rd grade teachers. Both women were grandmothers in their late 40s, and they had the chiseled discipline of a drill sergeant with the empathy and kindness of a schoolyard bully. Writing was not my favorite subject.

Junior High English was rough. My handwriting did not improve, nor did my organizational skills. I could read a complicated book about the Vietnam War as told from a soldier’s point of view and then recite verbatim the structure and outline of the narrative. Unfortunately, speaking and writing are two different processes, and my hands could not keep up with my racing mind. I wrote more fragmented and run-on sentences for advanced English than any of my peers. Testing seemed to be my saving grace for B’s in Mr. H’s class.

High School was filled with more struggle. Grammar class was a nightmare. It was here I decided I had some sort of dyslexia at play within my life. I found myself mixing up word phrases as I tried to fix conjunctions, punctuation, and other errors. I passed with a C. I dreaded every single moment… Literature classes were a joy. I loved reading Shakespearean Plays, Short Stories, and Novels by great authors. I have read a few of those novels a second time as an adult after deconstructing my religious indoctrination and Republican familial influence. The Grapes of Wrath is one of my favorites to this day. I owe Mr. N., if he is still living, a great debt of gratitude for inspiring my reading throughout my life. Our essay tests were a challenge, but thankfully my literature teachers were more concerned about content within the narrative answers than with grammatical perfection.

My Senior English class focused on research and writing a research patper. I struggled mightily in this class. Everything from citing sources to developing the structure of the narrative was a nightmare. We had to do MLA citations, and I kept messing them up with APA citations. I passed the class with a C-. I don’t even remember what my final research paper was about. It was pathetic. I knew that college was going to be incredibly challenging if I had to write much… …and boy, did I have to write, and write, and write… It was a nightmare…

Writing with a typewriter is a pain in the ass. I don’t know how Stephen King and other prolific authors did it prior to the personal computer. I was convinced that I had dyslexia during college, as my papers were a disaster when typed up. The errors, and the inability to correct these errors without creating a mess with liquid paper, were frustrating. I began asking some friends to let me read their drafts and final papers after grading. I also visited the student center for some assistance in the writing department. I squeeked by in all of my gen-ed classes with C’s and D’s. My music classes were all A’s and B’s. I would have graduated Cum Laude if it weren’t for my general education classes. I felt like a dope, an imposter, and a peasant class kid in a wealthy upper-crust liberal arts college.

During my junior year in college, our main library on campus purchased an Apple II-E computer lab. I went to an introductory conference on how to use the lab, and met some of the tutors. I started writing all of my papers at the main library. I purchased the floppy discs to store them, and I paid the fees to print those papers up. Since I could proofread and correct the paper in real time, I finally made some progress. I slowly improved and by the end of college my essays, research papers, and reports were securing B’s and C’s rather than C’s and D’s. One of my music professors noticed my improvement and kept encouraging me to develop those skills.

Upon entering the teaching field, it was back to typewriters. Computers were not accessible to teachers until after school. When you’re a band director the evening is for rehearsals and athletic performances, competitions, or concerts. I wrote all kinds of schedules, letters, and notifications home on a typewriter. I wasted more time writing than I did lesson planning, teaching, and score study. I hated this aspect of my job. This all changed in 1997.

In 1997, I was working at a small K-8 school NE of the Quad Cities. We were all getting desktop computers in our classroom, training on the internet, and if we were interested we could get a first-generation laptop. I seized on the opportunity and joined the technology committee. This opportunity came with the requirement that I had to write our technology plan to acquire up to $250K in training and equipment monies. It was here that my writing finally started to get better. Writing a business-style technology plan improved my coherence in sentence structure. It focused my language use, and helped me be precise. The early spell check and sentence structure apps within Microsoft Office supplies helped me correct and better my identification of writing errors. I had this propensity for writing in passive voice. Occasionally that still happens. I did secure $250K for my school district, and the plan ended up being 230 pages.

When I began graduate school, I was incredibly worried about writing. I had severe anxiety regarding my writing performance. My first assignment was to write a biography. Since my grad classes were in the summer, I had to write this paper with very little time. I spent five hours that afternoon and evening developing a biography. When I finished I had an eight-page essay, that was decent. Then we walked through steps of developing a research thesis statement, and mock thesis topic. I focused on the pedagogical strategies of composer Paul Hindemith. He wrote many works for amateur players. One of his String Quartets has Viola or Cello Part that his wife could play, whereas the remaining three parts were written for professionals. I did not finish grad school as life interrupted, and my children were born. I would finish grad school about eight years later. This experience gave me some confidence in my writing skills

During this time, I found my voice for writing. My structure improved. Citations got better. I wasn’t an expert at it, but I was improving. Writing became easier. My mock thesis for grad school ended up being over 40 pages in length within a dozen weeks of work. Western Illinois gave us the option for extra coursework to achieve our degree instead of an actual thesis. My mock thesis was double the size of my classmates’ and included nearly 50 different sources. This thesis was in regard to education policy as I had become much more passionate about the policy changes affecting my profession. I finally found a passion when it came to writing.

When I tried PhD work, my writing improved more, but the nature of that time in my life (divorce,) and an unwillingness to allow me to do education policy as my research left me disheartened. I didn’t have the passion to write about some composer, conducting gesture analysis, or pedagogical science. I wanted something hard-core that could be used as information for politicians and advocacy groups… …so back to K-12 education I went.

I didn’t write much except for a couple of undergrad classes to get my Iowa certification. I exceeded what was expected for those classes. It left me yearning for something more. I hemmed and hawed about writing a blog. How would I do such a thing. Researching products is something my wife does. I hate comparing things in the technological world. Eventually I settled on WordPress. The service was inexpensive enough, and I kind of figured out how to get started. I still don’t know much about making this site flashier and more interesting for the reader. I just don’t want to spend lots of money, or monetize my platform. I just want to write for the sake of writing. I want to express myself creatively in the manner I once did as a conductor and musician. I like reflecting on my experiences, and putting them in a memoir of sorts. I also like rambling on and on about other things that bring me passion, whether it is politics, music, baseball, or life in general. I look forward to writing about things, no matter how mundane they are. The practice of writing has become a part of my weekly routine. Sometimes, I research for it, and other times I just write without a direct structure. After writing I feel better. I wish I had started this years ago.

Thanks for reading this ramble on writing. I wish all of you a happy National Day On Writing! May your creation be satisfying and enjoyable…

…so it goes…