The Yearbook of a Writer Part I — Non-Fiction (WIP)

Prologue

I found a notebook in an empty classroom, sitting near the front, its soft peach colored cover closed over various papers of basic algebra within it. I shouldn’t have opened it, but I did. Notebooks always give me a sense of peace. It’s because I am a writer, the feeling of the slips of paper beneath my fingers, filling up with ink as it spills from my eyes onto the page. The notebook drew me to it, as I know that a notebook can tell you a lot about a person. For example, this notebook was obviously carried, not stuffed into a bag repeatedly. The cover and corners of the pages were still smooth and crisp, the notes within were neatly spaced with clear penciled handwriting describing the mathematical equations of algebra and geometry, handouts neatly held by the front cover, nicely graded quizzes, homework assignments.

I do not recall the name, I did not recognize them. I was too afraid to take it to the campus police to be claimed, hoping optimistically that such a neatly organized spiral notebook will be found. The student that left it, to me, has a steady hand, takes their time with tasks, properly manages their time, is studious, and organized. With these words in this long paragraph, I wish them success, I wish them to follow their dreams and achieve them. I am also sorry for opening your notebook.

If I were to leave my notebook, anywhere, around anyone, unattended, I would die. The thought sends me into a panic any time I can’t immediately find it in my bag or near me on my desk. I’ve thrown rooms and houses apart to find them, only to find them in that one pocket of my bag I never use or underneath something I threw while trying to search. That said, my notebooks are the complete opposite of the one I found in that classroom. I have many notebooks; many still empty, but the ones that are full are stuffed with words and lists, dogeared edges, bookmarks, notes, tabs, scribbles, doodles. My scrawling, looping handwriting is illegible without help. There’s history in them, feelings, and journal entries, to-do lists, lists of things I need to keep in mind, things I need to avoid, find, money owed or lent out. They fill slowly but surely, the edges wrinkling with every time it’s thrown into my bag. While I do not allow anyone to view my notebooks, by any means, punishable by death, or just about, there are several people in my life that if they were to find my notebook left at their house, or at school, I would most likely be killed instead if they were to read it.

My mother would most likely kill me if any of them were found, or at the very least disown me completely. Not only for the notes about her, including what I am currently writing now, especially to any audience. But also the fact that she would have preferred if I had a notebook similar to the one I found, simple, clean, crisp. Not messy, jumbled, filled with tabs falling off, forgotten bookmarks. Mom would have wanted me to never organize a writing journal, never understood the need for such a thing, never believing anything good comes from the arts, that if you want to succeed you have to go into the business, legal, or medical field.

“That’s such a hard field, Sabrina,” she said, when I told her my plans to get an English degree, to go to college to finally get an education.

A writing journal will not bring me success. Everything she ever did was in her calendar book and nothing else, never found a passion for reading, could not even tell me the most recent book she has ever read for “fun” if I asked.

She told me, “Sabrina, don’t be a writer.”

So I did not become a writer.

Elementary School

First Grade:

If you asked me, I wanted to be a teacher, inspired by my own at the time, who was both my kindergarten and first grade teacher. I loved to read, especially in the cardboard house that our teacher created for us to read in. There was a waiting list for the opportunity to have alone time with a book in there, and you needed to use it wisely, taking multiple books if you could. Books were one of the few things that kept my attention, despite my “severe” ADHD.

I never create things like what I read, I could never be a writer. The concept never even cross my mind. Teaching was something real, something seemingly easy to a 5 year old. Books were magical creations that were thrown into the cosmos by word witches and wizards that just created things out of thin air.

I was not a writer. I could not perform magic.

Second Grade:

I got my ears pierced, and I forget why I needed to beg my mother to get them done improperly by a piercing gun in front of Claire’s in the Charlestown Mall, but I did. It was not common knowledge that you can never clean a piercing gun. Prior to that moment I had never experienced anything so painful, and even thinking about it as I walked out of the mall, ears on fire, I felt the pit in my stomach churn and I began to weep loudly again in the parking lot, and my dad had to pick me up and carry me on his shoulders so we could get to the car faster.

My best friend, Katie, just a year older than I am, could not get hers pierced, her parents saw it as a bad idea, and I thought that was crazy, after the burning pain subsided. I felt special because of the piercings, and wanted her to feel special, too. I would continuously bring it up as a talking point and it’s honestly a miracle she put up with me.

My family had a brand new computer given to us by a family friend which had Wordpad on it, and just about nothing else. I began typing out my life experiences with her, talking about “the girl who could not get her ears pierced.” I even thought to use different names. As I learned to type in school, the words came easier. With fury, I wrote out my small life.

I did not know you were allowed to talk about your real life experiences without changing it to fiction. I suppose this was my first take on Non-Fiction as a genre, without realizing it, I rarely changed any events. It went on for pages, and I probably added to it consecutively for weeks, months at a time, every day adding a little bit here to the adventure, a little bit here and there, continuing the adventures of the girls.

Katie moved away that summer. We remained penpals, called occasionally despite the long-distance charges. I tried to continue to write about the adventures of the girls regardless, but the magic stopped working and eventually the computer lost all its files.

My parents never knew about the text file, I never even showed the work to Katie before she moved, and I minimized the screen anytime anyone would come into the room, in fear of being mocked.

I was not a writer. Writers show their work.

Third Grade:

I wanted to be a paleontologist, but I said archeologist per my parent’s suggestion that I wouldn’t ever actually find a dinosaur fossil, but god I hoped, and wished. I was beginning to have dreams of finding some way to make millions of dollars, thinking about what stores I would splurge all my money on. Maybe the CD shop Kiss the Sky in Batavia, maybe Science and Surplus in Geneva, maybe Funcoland. I wanted to be rich, so I could somehow not go to school anymore, where I was ostracized and alone now, where kids thought I had lice and ran from me. Even Katie was gone, but with money I could go visit her. I was so lonely that I wanted to escape but I couldn’t even scream with all of the ADHD medication in me.

We were assigned a book project, in which they hand you a clean white unfilled book, and were told to do whatever we wanted with it. I decided to write about all the kinds of pets my friends have; birds, lizards, frogs, hamsters, dogs, cats. I illustrated and wrote the book myself, as per the assignment.

I spent hours coloring and drawing and writing out the descriptions. I felt the flame of pride as it was coming together, gluing down the typed out descriptions I wrote myself in the computer. I completed it and received a participation award.

My mother came in while I was reading over the finished product, she did not knock, and saw the book, lifted it up from me, and cooed like it was the finger painting you’d see from a 3 year old, not the creation and imagination of a 8 or 9 year old in physical form. She called it cute and proceeded to show it to visiting relatives. I know now that this is something parents do, to show off work of their child, thinking that it shows pride as a parent… but at the time, I felt betrayed, humiliated, mocked just as I was in school. This was a common feeling I got from my mother, or any relatives that visited. I never was able to speak up against them because I was a child.

When I finally got the book back into my hands, I specifically remember the feeling of my grandfather’s newspaper and vegetable wrappers I removed from the kitchen garbage to put my book deep underneath them, to then push the garbage down. I went downstairs to my room to be alone, and would later receive a disappointed look from my teacher when I told her it wasn’t going to be displayed in the library with the others.

I was not a writer. Writers are not ashamed of their work.

Fourth Grade:

I got assigned the book project again, except this time, inspired by the amount of books I was reading. This was of course thanks to the Pizza Hut reading program they had at my school to bribe you into reading with the early increase of obesity. I wrote about a group of mice, working with other “pests” to escape the house that wanted to kill them, referring to the humans and pets as “The Doom.” I planned to illustrate it, but got lost within it, too intimidated to write. I couldn’t show anyone. The only one who saw it, was my teacher, who particularly liked my attention getting beginning with sounds. Apparently I understood these concepts along with metaphor as a 10 year old. I was proud and appreciated her compliments a lot. She tried to help.

I still have the book, the cover is a lie, as there is probably only two drawings in the entire thing, the glue stick is warping on the paper, and only half the book is filled. I remember running out of time, rushing it so last second, that my mom was more mad at me for not completing an assignment on time than anything else. She didn’t see it as a creative project, but something I needed to get a grade. I cut all the ideas I had for it to just turn it in on time, half complete. I dedicated it to Katie.

I was not a writer. It was just an assignment.

Fifth grade:

I was not assigned to write a book this year. 9/11 shook everyone up, too, which definitely didn’t help things. I honestly can’t remember if we were even asked to do the project. I most likely refused to turn it in, due to my last experiences with it. It was also around this time that I was informed that you actually needed to do a lot of work, including intensive science, which I was horrible at, to become an archaeologist and I felt the dream of finding a dinosaur slipping from me. I would never be able to escape.

In art class, we were assigned to draw Dragonball Z characters or Sailor Moon characters depending on your sex. Girls draw Sailor Moon, boys draw Dragonball. That’s just how it is, it doesn’t matter if you also watch Dragonball, Sabrina. You were requested to use multiple forms of a collage to mix different types of materials (felt, pipe cleaners, different kinds of paper, paint, whatever you could find) to create a portrait following the styles of anime. I remember being very excited about this, being the only one in the entire class to actually know what my teacher was talking about, and I madly printed out reference pictures, bringing a wall scroll I had of Sailor Moon to hang in the art room while we worked. The teacher gave me a C on the project. I think it was late, but I mainly only felt the irreversible envy of my classmates that never once watched a single episode of Sailor Moon or Dragonball, getting higher grades than me on a project I was incredibly passionate about. I realized that passion will not mean anything, that art is not only subjective, but ultimately, does not mean anything to anyone else. It was just an assignment and I was incredibly average, if not horrible with due dates.

I was not a writer, nor was I an artist. It did not matter what I was.

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Part 2: https://medium.com/@Annoyance/the-yearbook-of-a-writer-part-ii-non-fiction-wip-b9046fbd62f9