"The beginning is always today."

     I was trying to come up with some quirky way to start this thing and did what I like to think everyone does and Googled things. First, I googled "unique ways to say hello" then "quotes about starting something new". Jackpot. Landing on a list of 60+ New Beginnings Quotes for a Fresh Start and found "The beginning is always today" by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. As someone who has a fondness for Mary Shelley (who was described as Goth Queen Mom Friend in Ann Foster's blog Vulgar History ). I instantly love it and in classic compulsive decision making went with it. 

    It also fits with my never-ending habit of planning to but never quite starting things. This blog is a great example of that. I have been thinking about starting this for maybe four months? Basically, I thought I would document the process of me applying to programs in MFA in Creative Writing. But I've already submitted some but not all, so there goes a real time documentation of the process. I'll no doubt still talk about it at some point since the decision to apply for MFA programs was a big one for me. Well the decision to "do writing" was life changing. Rather the decision to come clean about wanting to be a writer was huge for me. It was a big shock to my parents, most of their confusion can be summed up with: "I thought you hated to write." Which is still very much true, it's just kind of complicated. I think I'll just lightly touch on that here, but I will definitely go into more detail later.

    In grade school I was diagnosed with dyslexia, in written expression. Meaning that I had very good reading comprehension and could read above my actual grade level but my writing was subpar. I also was diagnosed with dysgraphia which explains my truly horrendous handwriting. Thankfully I was born in time for computers to become the focus of human communication or I would have been screwed. Although that being said computers weren't super common at the time of my diagnosis I was still turning things handwritten as a kid. Do kids even do that now????? No idea. 

    What I wasn't diagnosed with at that time was ADHD, which turned out to be a bit of a missing link. I finally got the diagnosis this year and finding out more and more about ADHD has really put things in perspective for me. A similar thing happened when I got the dyslexia diagnosis. Being able to put a name to it and realize it wasn't a personal failing but rather the way my brain worked, really helped to remove some of the internalized shame. That being said, it didn't suddenly make writing easier.

    How to describe what writing is like for me? Hmmm. It's difficult to conceptualize. I've heard dyslexia described as a language acquisition disorder in the past. Which always resonated with me. While trying to communicate at any given time I can struggle to find the word I'm looking for. I will be mid-sentence, mid-climax of a retelling of a story and suddenly nothing. I can see the picture in my mind of thing I'm trying to say but the word is lost. Worse yet, not only can't I remember the word I want to say, I can't remember any other word to use. My brain like a toddler throwing a tantrum, stomps its feet, crosses it's arms and holds its breath, refusing to do anything until that one precious word is found. But try as I may, searching between the couch cushions, under the bed, in the laundry, it's no where to be found. 

    I used to find the whole thing unbearably embarrassing. Truth be told, I still do. There is nothing I find more distressing than not being able to make myself understood. To this day, I will sit dumbfounded unable to find a word while others stare at me with this pitying look on their face. Now I just explain the problem and try my best to push through although I will continue to wrack my brain for hours, sometimes days until I remember that one word. 

    This inability to find words is exponentially worse when writing. There is some link missing between thinking of words and writing them. I have found typing, for some unknown reason, to be much more streamlined than handwriting. When I was a child and tried to explain it to my parents, I told them that my mind moved too fast for my hands to keep up. Which would explain why when I read back my drafts there were be words or whole chunks missing in sentences or thoughts. This was especially true when trying to ensure my handwriting is legible. But I can type pretty quickly and luckily spellcheck helps to ensure I make some kind of sense.

    After I was diagnosed, I was lucky enough my parents were able to access help for me. They tried first to keep me in regular school and just got me tutors to help me outside of school. I did that for about a year after I was diagnosed and then I was put in a private school that focused on teaching dyslexic children. It's hard for me to judge now how helpful that was because from what I remember most of the skills revolved around reading, which never really was my problem. But I definitely benefited from the smaller classrooms and one-on-one attention. But any student, not just kids with learning disabilities, would have thrived with more attention by the teacher.

    Ultimately, I learned some tricks along the way. But still writing was an extremely unenjoyable activity and I avoided it as much as I could. I would procrastinate, unable to think of what to write, and getting distracted by anything and everything. Only when I run up against the deadline of a due date, would I finally, sit down and projectile vomit all the words I could think up and hope they were in some kind of order and made some kind of sense. This is where it would have been useful to have known I had ADHD. Because this from what I can tell pretty classic for ADHD. The anxiety of the deadline spurs creativity.

    This is how I went along throughout school. Avoiding writing until the very last possible moment and speed writing something, anything, often times finishing minutes before it was due. On top of that I would very loudly from atop all the rooftops shout about how much I hated to write. Because I did and I still do. Writing sucks, it's hard, and I hate it. But, I also love it a little bit. I love creating something with it. Having a thing to show and say, "I made this! Look at what I made!"

    That second part, I have been a bit delayed on but that's what this is for. I'm going to post about how writing is going and at the end of the week I will post an excerpt of what I've worked on. I'm hoping this will help keep me accountable to continue to work (a strategy to help with the ADHD procrastination thing) and a way for me to start getting some feedback, since I've shown my work to all of one person and well the few admission committees I've sent excerpts to. 

    Here goes nothing. Hello, I'm Nadia and I'd like to share my writing with you.