Write or Wrong

I am told that I was a loquacious child; a born yapper.

I screamed for the first 3 months of my life, mainly when it came to being held by my father. You know those babies on the airplane with the interminable, ear piercing cries that you grumble about for days after the flight?

Yep, that baby was me.

My dad was convinced that I hated him. I have this image of him in my favorite rocking chair donning gigantic eighties headphones to block out the shrieking and attempting to lull me to sleep. Unfortunately, he couldn’t actually take up the advice of Stevie and “go” his “own way;” at least not until the crying infant in his arms had drifted into a peaceful slumber.

In time, my screeching pattern evolved into arguably more intelligent speak. With an incongruent blend of nostalgia and relief, my mother regales the charade that was our morning drive to nursery school: me in my car seat, chattering incessantly about anything and everything I saw, gasping only for wont of air. Green trees, yellow school buses, red stop signs; dogs, cats, windows and doors; if I saw it, she was going to hear about it. She would indulge me at first, encouraging me in my garrulous ways, but after a while, she would zone out the baby babble.

On the whole, such attempts were futile, as my little rambles often involved questions, albeit rhetorical and meaningless ones like, “right, Mom?” or “isn’t that funny?” And thus, my mother would arrive at her inevitable daily breaking point, catch my eager, observant eyes in the rearview and say,

“Jessie, honey? Do you think you could give Mommy some quiet time to think?”

Down the line, as a chatty adolescent, I met more direct, pleading versions of this request.

“Jessie, honey? (the diplomatic overture endured through the years) I challenge you to not say anything for the entire rest of the car ride.”

Or, from my older sister, Sara, more of an autocrat,

“Jessie, Do you EVER stop TALKING!?!”

The point is, I am, always have been, and always will be, a chatterbox.

That, and a wordsmith. A lover of language; an aficionado of rhythmic syntax; an enthusiast of proper diction; an admirer of an image or emotion that has been evoked through the selection of the perfect string of words. To this day, I feel a thrill when I arrive at a crossword puzzle answer by scrolling through the recesses of my brain for a Spanish verb stem. I like to think of myself as a kind of amateur etymologist.

I suppose it started, I mean really started, in elementary school, 1st grade to be exact. What a treat it was to have a turn in Ms. Kulak’s old-fashioned, footed “reading” bathtub, complete with fluffy pillows and literary stuffed animals. That tub oozed majesty. I recall so vividly removing my Velcro sneakers, climbing up the wooden stepstool, and settling in with Amelia Bedelia and The Berenstien Bears. Like the princess and the pea, perched there atop all those pillows with nothing to do except sound it out; it just didn’t get much better than that.

And so began my love affair with words.

As elementary school progressed, it became clear to my parents and teachers that I had a knack and a real passion for reading and writing. I never seemed to score below a 90% on vocabulary and spelling quizzes, and I genuinely enjoyed the prep work for them: flashcards, acronyms, ditties.

I can still hear Mr. Kahn’s raspy smoker’s voice, admonishing our fifth grade Language Arts class, “i before e, except after c,” as he explained the difference between “receive” and “reprieve.” It felt exciting to me to learn new words and their meanings, to express my feelings more precisely, my opinions and observations more clearly. I could wiggle my way out of helping with the dishes by reporting that I was lethargic, rather than just tired; I could explain that a movie made me feel forlorn instead of simply sad; I needed a snack because I was voracious instead of just hungry.

And the books. The many, many, hundreds of books, for which my thirst was insatiable. The Jessie come on you can’t possibly want to keep all these you’ve read them each more times than you can count on both hands books that piled up beside my bed and spilled off my shelves. Trumpet of the Swan, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, The Indian in the Cupboard, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. The American Girls series, Roald Dahl, Lois Lowry, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Katherine Patterson.

My affinity for all things language – etymology, reading, writing, followed me into middle school. I can remember being gently reprimanded by Ms. Fields, my 6th grade Phenomenon of Language teacher, for skipping ahead to declensions in my Latin workbook while the rest of the class was still busy memorizing the translation for frog and window. “Stay with us, Jessie,” she would say, a slight admission of laughter in her eyes.

Over the course of my 7th and 8th grade years, I was introduced to the literary classics. For the first time in my history of reading, I encountered lyrical descriptions, metaphors that danced before my eyes and characters so rich with personality they felt like my own friends and family.

Dickens' 19th century London, overrun with cholera and filth: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times;” Steinbeck’s American West during the Depression, and the ever-tragic Lenny Small; Harper Lee’s lessons on race relations reported through the eyes of beloved narrator, Scout Finch; the meaning of macabre in Masque of the Red Death and hubris in Macbeth; the doomed love story of Romeo and Juliet: “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life.”

Amidst my reading of the masterpieces, I learned the meaning of literary terms like rising action, motif, theme, and climax. At last, I was equipped with five-paragraph essay form and proper thesis statements. I found this new highbrow world both thrilling and unpredictable. Jumping around between genres, cultural contexts, and writing styles, I never could be quite sure what was coming next.

On the first day of 9th grade English, Mr. Deal, who would be m teacher for three out of my four high school years new teacher, informed us that we would be playing a little word game out of a book called Crazy English: a game of rhyming and logic. He would provide two descriptive phrases, and we in turn, had to provide two rhyming words matching his descriptions. He threw out the first one, “non-meat-eating collector of old things,” and my hand shot into the air. My classmates, as well as Mr. Deal, appeared both incredulous and amused.

“Vegetarian antiquarian?”

Mr. Deal approached me with a plastic orange jack-o-lantern full of Blow Pops, urging me to take my pick. “Nice job, Jess.” I devoured my saccharine sour apple treat with great pride.

Over the next few years, my repertoire of language and literature continued to expand: Jane Eyre, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and The Handmaid’s Tale. Thoreau, Zora Neale Hurston, Twain, Dostoyevsky. I was given creative assignments too: rewriting the ending of The Odyssey, inventing new words (neologisms) and their definitions, composing poetry in the style of Ralph Waldo Emerson, translating a James Taylor song into a metered poem.

Of course it didn’t hurt that all this was occurring in an environment that fostered a love of learning. Mr. Deal was eccentric and extraordinarily passionate; a thespian at heart. During Freshman English class one day, he led my fellow students and me into the woods behind school. We followed skeptically, but were delighted when he had us stand in a circle, take turns beating a snare drum, all the while reciting Poe’s “Hiawatha” in unison. Junior year, he brought Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” to life by standing atop his desk and bellowing the words with believable agitation.

Mr. McMillan, my sophomore year teacher, was similarly passionate about all things English. You could tell form the moment you walked into his classroom; walls beautified with posters of Walden Pond and Jane Austen; shelves lined with plush Emily Dickinsons and bendable Shakespeares; bulletin boards covered with flyers for local poetry readings, essay contests, and summer writing conventions. Mr. McMillan was the ultimate; knowledgeable, animated, helpful. I really couldn’t have asked for a better teacher, and I trace much of my enthusiasm for English back to my experience as his student.

In particular, Mr. McMillan sparked my interest in modern fiction. Interspersed in our curriculum of 19th and 20th century American authors were short stories and novels by some of his favorites: Joyce Carol Oates, Frank McCourt, Wally Lamb, Elizabeth Graver. He encouraged me to read as much as I could of these contemporary writers, to note their unique styles, characterizations and tones. In doing so, he fostered my interest in writing as a craft as well as the infinite possibilities of fiction.

And finally, college. I could write oodles about this stage of my life, but I will try and keep it brief and focus on the highlights.

As an English major at Boston College, I took some of the most fascinating classes, and learned from some of the most enthusiastic teachers. I did not have to select a focus, and therefore was able to take a wide variety of courses. The ones that stand out in my mind as the best were my Creative Writing course, my English courses abroad, and my two seminars.

Creative Non-Fiction gave me the opportunity to write, first and foremost. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote. I so treasured that time, as I had never really had such a chance to turn inwards and write about my own experiences, emotions, fears, and hopes. I found peer workshops both helpful and eye opening; the process of exchanged critique incredibly rewarding. My professor, Sue Roberts, was a joy. Effervescent, hilariously sarcastic, and enamored by the creative process, she nurtured my love of creative writing. From her class, I came to understand the power of writing as a medium to think and to cope.

During my junior year in college, I lived in central London. While many of my classmates were busy doing field research on British pub culture, I researched the actual world I had read about in books. I was thrilled to study mere blocks from where the Bloomsbury Group convened to discuss their novels, essays, and poetry. I read about Southampton Row in Vanity Fair and could stop there for coffee that same afternoon.

While studying there, my Women Writers course solidified my interest in New Historicist and Feminist theory. We read everything from A Room of One’s Own to Margaret Atwood to Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy. I was captivated with the manner in which the author’s personal experiences as a child, a female, a racial minority, and an ethnic outsider shaped her writing and allowed her to illuminate an important historical context and render her experiences emotionally and intellectually accessible, if not tangible.

Upon returning to Boston College my senior year, I set out to focus on female writers and texts rooted in sociological and historical study. I enrolled in Convents, Covens, and Crusaders, an Early Modern Women Writers course centered around historical discussion, and Studies in Children’s Literature, which explored Disney films, the European myths on which they are based, and their gender implications for modern society. In both courses, I enjoyed the exercise of incorporating primary and secondary sources into my critical writing.

I also chose two seminar courses on Emily Dickinson and Jane Austen during my senior year. Both seminars, taught by fabulously intelligent and passionate professors, John Anderson and Rosemarie Bodenheimer, shed light on how much material for discussion a single author can provide. It was exciting to become an expert of sorts, first on the prolific recluse Emily Dickinson, and later on the much-celebrated Jane Austen, who quickly rose the ranks to become my favorite author to date.

Reading Dickinson, I connected with poetry for the first time in my life; her dash-studded poems could capture my emotions with such astonishing accuracy.

The following semester, I found that Austen’s body of work provided me with pure enjoyment. Reading her novels felt like exciting detective work as I uncovered how her characters and plot lines revealed her attempts to reconcile her avant-garde, feminist opinions with the repressive, regimented society in which she lived and sought to publish.

After college, something drew me back to London. My day job was advertising, but I lived for my weekend adventures: Brighton, where I strolled along the cobblestone streets walked by Lydia Bennett and Wickham in Pride and Prejudice; Bath, where I explored Jane Austen’s childhood home at 4 Sydney Place and treated myself to Early Grey tea and scones with clotted cream at the Pump Rooms.

Back in the City, I spent many Sundays reading and writing in the Reading Room at the British Museum, channeling Virginia Woolf, a frequent attendee of the Room who had once said, “if truth is not to be found on the shelves of the British Museum, where is truth?” I also spent a fair amount of time at the British Library, perusing early drafts of Mrs. Dalloway, as well as letters exchanged between Jane Austen and her sister Cassanrda.

Skip ahead one year, which brings us to today. This introduction. This moment.

You see, I have always been a sucker for puns. Good, bad, the whole lot of them. I am that girl who all too often can be heard chiming in, “No pun intended,” or better yet, “Pardon the pun. It all comes back to my love of language.

So, it makes perfect sense for the name for my (according to my mother) long awaited blog to involve a play-on-words.

Alas, read my write brain.

Right brain, write brain. Right brain, because I believe that is how I operate for the most part; write brain, because this here, and what is to come is born out of my creative right brain; because something primitive, primordial even, coded deep within the folds of my cerebral cortex, programs me to be a writer.

And write brain, because for me, to write is right. So, it's write or wrong.

Going back to point one: right brain. According to science, we humans are either left- or right-brain dominant. Left-brained individuals are rational, organized, and logical. Right-brained individuals are creative, random, and spontaneous. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive; people just usually have a proclivity to inhabit one end of the spectrum or the other.

When I asked my father which he thought I was, he confirmed my opinion: “You are primarily right-brained, but you can call you on your left brain capabilities whenever you need them.” In that sense, he said, I am well balanced. I think he was spot on, as I am happy to report that my left and right brain seem to be coexisting just fine.

While I do tend more towards the creative side of things, I also have bits of the compulsive right brainer in me. To quote the musical Rent, "I make lists in my sleep.. I never quit, I follow through." At times, I crave predictability, other times, I thrive on surprise, change, and spontaneity. I think with my heart, and not my head, wear my emotions on my sleeve, and usually default to instinct. It’s my Mom who whenever I am facing any kind of decision urges me, “Go with your gut.”

And so,

Read my Write Brain.

An invitation of sorts, into the recesses of my think tank, into my innermost thoughts, observations, quandaries and conundrums. I cannot promise artistic genius or even novelty, but I can guarantee that will be real, honest, and I hope, thought-provoking.

My goals in starting this blog are three-fold. First, and most simply, to write. To call on my creative right lobe, to create. To establish a ritual and habit of translating thought to written word. (Oh, and I will try my best to keep my posts shorter than this one.)

Second, to share this writing with the people I like, love, and have yet to meet. In my mind, we all have unique talents, and in an ideal world, can benefit from and draw on one another’s talents. Through this blog, I endeavor to make my talent accessible to everyone, so that each may enjoy it, learn from it, laugh with it, roll their eyes at it, shrug their shoulders at it, agree with it, disagree with it, essentially, to react to it is they wish. I welcome, in advance, any reactions, good bad or otherwise, that you may have to my writing. I hope that through this blog, you connect with me, and maybe I connect with you. Either way, I hope to bridge the gap between us.

Lastly, I created this blog to help me sort through, create, and track my goals. I am at a point in my life where every day is a new fork in the road. I feel like I’m the main character in one of those science fiction books where you get to choose the next move of the character, and then read the chapter that corresponds to that move. Am I making the right moves? If I want to go back and try a different route, will it be too late? Am I committing myself too seriously to certain routes, and not seriously enough to others?

I hope that this blog will help me to arrive at some answers. This is not to say I am in a rush to “get there.”

Ok, maybe I am. But I’m trying really hard not to be. I’m trying to remember that I am 23 years old, and it is perfectly okay/normal that I don’t know where I am going, or even where I want to go. If anything, all of this is a huge adventure. I live with my best friends in arguably the best city in the world; I have a cultural and social haven at my fingertips; I have a great job and room to grow in several directions professionally; I have an amazing family that supports me in pretty much whatever I do; and I am a mover and a shaker.

My whole life, the paths I’ve pursued whether by choice or by circumstance have afforded me the opportunity to have exciting, enriching, and formative experiences, and most importantly, to grow. My parents have always taught me that when you are faced with a situation, a problem, or an opportunity, it’s up to you what you make of it. You can be a passive victim, a passerby to whom things happen to, or you can actively determine the course of your life; make things happen.

I like to think that for the most part, I’ve done a decent job falling into the latter category. I think back on all of the experiences I have had in the last ten years, both “good” and “bad:” a community service trip to Alaska at age 16; excelling at lacrosse in high school; attending Boston College; auditioning for and being accepted into an all-female a Capella group; majoring in English and Spanish even though it didn’t provide a secure future path; running the Boston Marathon; studying abroad for a semester in London; moving back there and landing my first “real” job after college.

Traveling through Europe; falling in love; recovering from heartbreak; deluding myself into believing I am actually recovered from heartbreak; picking up and moving to New York City; nurturing friendships old and new; establishing goals; realizing vices; making habits; breaking habits; failing; exploring; risking; losing; wondering; wishing; mourning; missing; building; understanding; misunderstanding; solving; resolving; arguing; hoping; helping; listening; questioning; disappointing; explaining; kissing; hugging; enduring; fearing; answering; defending; offending; mitigating; mastering; cowering; delighting; clutching; withdrawing; laughing; crying; bemoaning; appreciating; learning.

(You get the point)

Oh, and last but not least, reflecting, reveling, and ruminating.

And to think I’m just at the beginning.