Should you only write or speak if you can do it properly? This is an issue I have struggled with throughout my life and for someone who is a writer, it's a very serious question.
Recently this question reared its head in the very public realm of facebook. A writer friend of mine starting making posts, light rants if you will, about people who confused their, there and they're, your and you're and its and it's, and used apostrophes and possessives improperly. I publicly typed "if it's me, I'm sorry" and she assured me it wasn't me she was speaking about. What she didn't realize is it that it easily could have been.
Later my same writer friend made more such statements again and others joined in. The general consensus of those commenting was that a public persona shouldn't post things to represent their business, even facebook posts, unless they were properly written. The idea was that it made that business seem unprofessional and their messages wouldn't be taken seriously. I jumped into the post and questioned that statement, particularly in the facebook forum which, by its very nature is less formal. I also asked, "Is a message only valid if properly spelled or written?" "Should someone who can't write properly not post publicly?"
I later held a private conversation with my writer friend about it and once she learned I was friends with the person who'd created the post in question, she assumed I was being protective of my friend. Well, yes and no. You see, I suffer from my own confusions with the English language. So much so that I stopped writing publicly for several years and in high school I used to hold on to my papers way beyond their due date because I wanted to go over and over my work. I remember a teacher noticed and told my mother I was a perfectionist. She turned a light on for me that day, but there would be other switches to throw too.
The unspoken secret
Just last night my friend who had made the grammatically improper statements in question was chatting with her dear friend and he teased her about her poor spelling. I love how our friends can tell us the good, the bad, and otherwise and they still love us and we them. But my friend made a telling statement about how this man was right, she wasn't a great speller but what really hurt was when others told her what she wrote made her appear stupid and how she almost didn't start her business because it involved being very public vocally and that for her brought back memories of being teased as a child -- all because she's dyslexic.
Dyslexic Brilliance
What if everyone with dyslexia was afraid to let their light shine? Well? First imagine the world without the inventions of Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell and Albert Einstein. That's just a start really -- George Washington suffered from dyslexia too. And what if Hans Christian Anderson hadn't written his tales or Leonardo de Vinci had been too afraid to give his light to the word? The list goes on and on.
The Language Wounds in My Life
Just this past week I was speaking with one of my best friends who is struggling to teach her dyslexic daughter. She said her daughter, Isabella, outright explains to people "I have dyslexia," whereas my friend tried to hide that most of her life. And there was a quiet, deep moment on the phone where my friend said, "I feel so guilty for having passed this down to her." I told my friend I believe we have the ability to heal more with each generation of our families and it appeared the stigma was part of what she and Isabella were working on.
I grew up with a dyslexic brother who was sent to special schools and made to trace letters on sandpaper over and over to try to learn the proper way to write things. He has since become a successful man with a great command of the English language and is thankful he got to attend special classes and learned to overcome his dyslexia. Not everyone can.
I wasn't diagnosed with dyslexia but I have suffered my own brain-bending confusions with grammar. For years I would write things and my deeply talented mother would help me unscramble them. She was my editor from birth and oddly enough, shortly after her death is when I started writing professionally. Editors would love my writing but tell me I had the order of sentences confused. I would ask them to show me how to do it better and by the time they were finished I would be confused and defeated because I couldn't understand the why or how of anything they'd done and I barely recognized my own work. Then as I started to get a small handle on what they were trying to teach me, I had a bizarre occurrence.
I got a piece accepted to a new paper and as it was going to print overnight, I drove to sit with the editor and make fast changes. This piece had been edited by my professor several times. It had been worked over like Michael Jackson's face -- there was still the essence of what once was but it was so rearranged I hardly recognized it. But I was sure it was better than what I'd written because my professor had finally signed off on it. "At least it wasn't the embarrassment I'd started with, I thought to myself.
"The new editor turned to me puzzled and said, "I think this sentence should be the beginning of this article," and my eyebrows raised. She had chosen the sentence out of the middle that was my lead when I first wrote the article. When I told her that she said,"You have a natural ability and voice, Hone that, stop listening to others." We then rearranged the piece yet again and I left dazed, half elated yet further confused.
What happened to me that day caused me to stop writing for years. I'd had enough. I felt I would never get it right and I didn't want to be humiliated by having poorly written things going to print where they'd live forever, waiting to embarrass me further. When I healed enough from those events to write again, I decided to just write the best I could, inherently and, interestingly enough, my sister helped edit me. But she only tweaked an adjective or punctuation mark every now and again, she didn't rearrange the entire puzzle.
Since I allowed that process to unfold, I've found other stories and genres coming through me and its freed a more authentic voice. I've even won honorable mentions from large organizations and had the Head of the Food Writer's Conference call to tell me not to give up that we need my voice. I might never be the writer my mother was or my professor wanted me to be but I can be the writer I am in my soul as I listen to my voice.
Shining the light where there was darkness
So yes to my author friend, (who by the way is a person I not only admire but even adore), I did react in part to the facebook discussion because it was my friend (at that time), who was being discussed, but it was as much about my own wound. I don't want myself or others to stop saying things that are valuable to the world just because they don't always say them right.
Last night as I sat across from my friend at a party and heard what she said, never having known she was dyslexic, a light went off and I knew this story should be told. There are many faces to this letter-warping disability and many unique voices. I hope all who suffer with language barriers get the help they need but I equally desire those who do aren't silenced or shamed into not having voices because they don't always say things in a grammatically correct fashion. Let us shine a light on some of the dark confusions others live in.
Meanwhile, I shared what I'd discovered with my writer friend and she, told me a couple of stories about dyslexic writers she knows of and sent me this link that I adore by Sangay Glass, titled, "For Dyslexics and The Spell Check Dependent", as well as information on a book that is a visual spelling guide for homonyms.
Do you have your own story with dyslexia to share? struggles and triumphs and humors and horrors welcome! If you have tools others don't know about, or your own stories, please let us know but meanwhile, consider why others might be making mistakes before jumping to conclusions and give them a bit of grace and latitude. I personally would rather hear imperfect stories told in the rawest way that move me, than a perfectly crafted story that plays it safe. And, I think, there is ultimately room for both!
