Wednesday, January 14, 2015

The Words That Connect Us


Jennifer Wolf Kam
Words have always been my friend. From the earliest days of my childhood, when I was delighted by tales of fairies, princesses and pokey puppies, through my grade school years when I crafted my very own books out of construction paper and crayon, they have been there. In middle school, the words I penned were filled with emotion and wonder, and they sustained me through the harrowing teen years. 

I wrote my first novel inside my 8th grade wood shop notebook. On the first page of my notebook, you can still see where I took notes on how to use a T-square ruler. After that, my words—pages and pages of themhave nothing to do with 8th grade wood shop (belated apologies to Mr. Kennedy.) The novel I wrote in it, well, it was a little too similar to a book I’d just read. But it was a start, a leap actually, because for the first time ever, I’d written something longer than five pages. Remarkably, it had a beginning, a middle and an end that actually (sort of) made sense.