No matter what your circumstances are, you can write. No matter what obstacles you face, no matter how little time you have, no matter what you’ve been told. You can write – and you should.
I’m dyslexic, which many people find really hard to reconcile with the fact I write for a living. ‘How can you be dyslexic and be a writer?’ they ask. ‘I don’t know how people can write when they’re not dyslexic,’ I reply.
As a little girl I wrote constantly. People assume that anyone who grows up to be a writer was writing prodigious works when they were young. I certainly wasn’t writing Enid Blyton books, Harry Potter novels or plays for my friends to appear in, but letters, my diary, lists of things I wanted to do, and elaborate birthday cards. My handwriting was poor and my spelling even worse. Adults would often lean over me while I was writing and, totally unsolicited, say, ‘You’re never going to be a writer – you can’t spell.’
These days I think, what the fuck? How appalling: adults puncturing a child’s balloon like that. Stealing the jam out of a kid’s donut. These adults looked at me, a dyslexic kid from a disadvantaged home, hunched over pages, writing, and thought, ‘I know what she needs: to be told she’s shit.’ There I was, happily writing away for no other reason than pleasure, not asking for advice or even encouragement. And these adults took it upon themselves to skewer my confidence. Most of them were barely literate themselves. They worked blue-collar jobs requiring a Grade 3 literacy level, tops. But, convinced they were just ‘being helpful’, they would tell me I’d never be a writer because I couldn’t spell.
I’ d respond, quick as a flash, ‘I don’t want to be a speller. I want to be a writer.’
Then they’d say, ‘Well, you’re never going to be a writer – you don’t read enough.’
I’d say, ‘Er, but I don’t want to be a reader. I want to be a writer.’
This is one of the greatest myths about writing: that in order to be a writer you need to read a lot. It is almost entirely perpetuated by non-writers. No, in order to be a writer you need to write a lot. You need to think a lot, listen a lot, do a lot. If you are not writing, you should be doing something worth writing about. But most of all, in order to be a writer, you need to write a lot.
Dyslexics have difficulty decoding and encoding words: basically, sounding them out and spelling them. In languages that are entirely phonetic, it’s less of a problem. About 10% of people are dyslexic – dyslexia is the most common learning disability in children and adults – yet very few are assessed and given support.
I’m proud to be dyslexic. And grateful. I saw a t-shirt the other day that said ‘Dyslexics Untie!’ Took me about five minutes to work it out. I tell the joke, ‘I realised I was dyslexic when I turned up to a toga party dressed as a goat.’ And I love that one about the dyslexic devil worshipper who sold his soul to Santa. You know the CAPS LOCK button on the keyboard? I always read it as COCK SLAP. Funny, perhaps. But not when you’re teaching computer skills at kinder.
Two of my sons are dyslexic and so is one of my siblings. It is highly hereditary. Like many dyslexics, I was diagnosed when my eldest son was. The psychologist who assessed him asked me if there were any other people with learning disabilities in our family. I said, ‘If Dom has something, I have it too. I totally understand how he reads a word as “was” on one page, “saw” on the next page, then can’t identify it at all on the one after that.’ When I was growing up, adults said I didn’t try hard enough or concentrate enough. Like almost all dyslexics, I presented as very bright and social, very good at some things. I was what would now be known as a child with an ‘uneven profile’.
After our son was assessed, I discovered how poorly dyslexia is handled in our school system. The condition is misunderstood and badly managed. Teachers are not trained to pick it up, and even if they do, assessment can take up to a year. By that time, the child is often crushed by lack of confidence and low self-esteem. And there’s no tailored program in Australian schools to address dyslexia. Reading Recovery does not work for dyslexics. Weekly private tuition for years is a luxury of the wealthy.
But despite all that, I think dyslexia has given me far more benefits than disadvantages. Dyslexia is a different way of learning and seeing the world. Dyslexic brains work differently and have many inbuilt strengths. Basically, we see things from an aerial perspective, rather than a linear one. We can’t just rote-learn things; we need to understand them. We process everything at once; our strength is not in details. Dyslexics are very good at retrieving a swag of information from many different domains, which makes us great creative thinkers and problem solvers. But messy cooks. I cook with all the kitchen cupboards and drawers open. When we learn, it’s as if we are looking at a tree and instead of learning from the roots up, we learn from the limbs down. Which makes navigating our way through learning to read and spell a nightmare. Some dyslexics just give up.
Dyslexics see things in pictures. When learning to read, we often memorise the shapes of words, guess them and take clues from nearby words. Yet if you tell a dyslexic a story, their comprehension is excellent. One of our biggest weaknesses is reading aloud; we often sound stilted because our brain is so overloaded.
Dyslexic children often appear quite bright, so teachers assume they will catch up with their classmates eventually. Dyslexics tend to make it through primary school okay, but as soon as they hit high school they are bombarded with so many unfamiliar words with similar shapes that it all gets too much. Some stop wanting to go to school, complaining that it’s too hard. They are then branded as lazy and from there it can all go horribly wrong.
Dom was captivated by books but struggled to read. Like many dyslexics, he was labelled a late bloomer. He just wasn’t getting bang for his buck out of the effort he was putting into reading. When we told the school he was dyslexic, they gave him a Reading Recovery test and were stunned to discover that he would not have qualified for extra help. The words on the test were all words he had memorised the shape of. If they had used nonsense words, like turning the word ‘laugh’ into ‘raugh’ or ‘tiger’ into ‘siger’, he would have been stumped.
Dyslexic children don’t need to ‘concentrate more’; they learn differently. Dyslexics need early assessment and multi-sensory, systematic, explicit teaching, with a focus on phonemic awareness. This needs to be addressed by early intervention and intensive support. It’s the long way round but the short way home. In this world of increased written communication, dyslexic children need a tailored, well-resourced program in our schools more than ever before. Early warning signs are poor spelling, having difficulty rote learning, memorising or following instructions. Instead of following instructions, dyslexics often look at the required outcome and work backwards to find their own way there.
There are many famous dyslexics: Sir Winston Churchill, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, John F. Kennedy, Richard Branson and JØrn Utzon, who designed the Sydney Opera House (sure, the Opera House was meant to be square but who’s complaining?). Also in the D Squad are Eddie Izzard, Billy Connolly, Whoopi Goldberg, Steven Spielberg, Muhammad Ali and Cher. Hans Christian Andersen, John Irving, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gustave Flaubert – all writers, all dyslexics. Writers are not necessarily spellers. Buggered if I’ll ever be able to spell ‘entrepreneur’, ‘raconteur’, ‘bureaucracy’, ‘diarrhoea’ or ‘restaurant’ without a dictionary (ed: or an editor!).
In America, dyslexia is sometimes viewed as a gift. Dyslexics have particular strengths: not just ones they’ve developed from having to compensate, but built-in ones, particularly in the areas of design, creativity, athletic ability and social skills. We’ll get there – we just take a different route. There is a map, we just need to be shown it. As early as possible. When he was ten, Dom couldn’t read. By the time he was thirteen, he was reading Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. Now, at seventeen, he’s writing his first book.
Charlie, my youngest, couldn’t tell the difference between a letter and a number until he was about eight. He’s going into high school next year and with the help of a tutor is happily on top of things. Charlie is a deep and lateral thinker. He’s the truth teller, the guy from left field. One afternoon when he was about eight, I picked him up from school. On the way home, I stopped at the supermarket. I am the world’s biggest optimist and always get too much stuff. We got back to the bike and I loaded everything into the basket, the panniers, my handbag and his school bag but still had two giant boxes of cereal left.
I said, ‘Charlie, we’re gonna try something a little crazy.’
I sat him on the back of the bike and got him to hold the two cereal boxes. Then I sat in front of him with my back facing him so the two boxes of cereal were sandwiched between us. He held onto my waist.
‘Okay, this is a bit crazy,’ I said.
Charlie’s response: ‘It’s only crazy if it doesn’t work.’
That’s typical dyslexic thinking. Have a stab. Think of the desired outcome and work your way back from it.
I often say that people with Asperger’s show you they love you by providing you with information. People with dyslexia show you they love you by solving your problem.
Why am I sharing so much about my dyslexia? To bust the myths and assumptions about who can be a writer.
You know who the hardest people to teach in Gunnas are? English teachers.
No, that’s not true: it’s easy to teach them, but very hard to deprogram them and strip them back to their natural, authentic voice and writing style. As children, most English teachers were fast readers, excellent handwriters and great spellers. They were little bookworms who were constantly validated for staying inside the lines. ‘Lovely handwriting!’ ‘Excellent spelling!’ ‘You answered those exam questions exactly the way you were taught.’ This feedback continued throughout high school and university. They were constantly rewarded for following the rules and doing what they were told. Then they went into schools, where they were encouraged to teach the same principles and punished if they didn’t.
English teachers come to my Gunnas courses desperate to find their way back to themselves. Their love of writing, words and stories, which drew them to teaching in the first place, is all but gone. It’s been driven out of them. Trained out of them. All that praise for staying inside the lines has stifled their imagination. Bonsai-ed their creativity. Foot-bound them. Trellised them.
If this sounds a bit like you, in the tools section I’ve described some great techniques, tricks, hacks and ideas to dismantle the amour you have found yourself in.
I know what it’s like. When you write for television or newspapers, there can be so many rules and constraints to work within that writing feels a bit like walking a tightrope with books on your head. Keep steady, eyes front, don’t wobble or go off course! It’s very hard to deprogram the training (brainwashing) and find your way back to your voice, your ideas, your imagination. I see pointless and dangerous nitpicking about rules all the time. Rules are great guidelines, but we must be sure to not be too rigid.
I often think skiing is a great example of how we can all co-exist by being aware of ourselves and using common sense. There are no rules on the slopes. We just watch the person in front of us.
There was a roundabout in the Netherlands that had resulted in a lot of deaths, injuries and accidents. There were a lot of signs telling people what to do and what not to do. Still, no matter how many signs and commands there were way too many accidents. Eventually after a lot of consultation they took down all the signs and signals. All of them. People had to use their common sense, look around and respond to the conditions. Problem solved. Accidents, injuries and deaths dropped to almost zero.
This is what it’s like to be dyslexic. We ignore the signs, the rules and the commands and we look at the whole picture or situation from an aerial perspective and work out how to get to the best possible place with the least amount of damage. Take a leaf out of our book.