In Russian, my native tongue, just like in many other languages including English, there are two distinct kinds of handwriting — cursive and block lettering. Unlike English, though, cursive handwriting (designed as to be faster and easier to write using hardly usable dip pens of times begone) is something school drills you with 24/7, and you could be disciplined pretty harshly for handing in your assignments in block even in high school. When I was growing up (and I mean age of two-three years), I didn’t know about the cursive lettering. I haven’t ever seen it — all information I acquired was from books, newspapers, and TV, obviously they all were printed, and used block lettering. Since I’ve been learning to write by the books, I wrote block.
For all intents and purposes, cursive didn’t exist in my world. Cue the disappointment when I got to school at age of five and had to learn writing in cursive. Out of all school chores, this was actually some kind of new knowledge — useless one, but new knowledge still. Then, I left that school, had a year-long break before moving on to the next one… and gleefully embraced block lettering back in my life.
Why am I even writing about this?
Well, I wanted to tell how I started to write, and in my early years the idea of writing creatively was absolutely bound with the need to actually write the creations down — I didn’t have a typewriter yet then (yes, I actually had a period of using a typewriter), and got my first computer only years later.
My first ever piece of creative writing was a “poem” written in second grade as a school assignment to write a poem about Kiev, city where I live. It was sucky to no end, but I still can recite it freely — “Каштановый город / Зеленью сият / Растенья он хранит / И жизнь вдохновляет / На новые причуды / Чтобы не было скучноты” (for Slavic-challenged: “A chestnut city (a common poetic name for Kiev) shines with the greenness, protects the plants and inspires the life to the new quirks, to avoid a bore”).
It barely rhymed, it barely made any sense, but I was proud of my little achievement.
Half a year and three grades later, I started my foreign literature class, with thirty creative writing assignments — most short stories, some fairy tales, some constrained writing, all on some specific topics related to the books I was to read — to do in order to get a passing mark for the class.
My parents were horrified, and I think still can’t recover from the shock they had.
I was just very sad I had to write it all down, in cursive lettering, and I probably wouldn’t have if not for my mom’s constant nudging, and sitting down with me collaborating.
Those thirty assignments, by my literature professor, Ms. Elena Kostyuk, not only left me with sore fingers and ears burning from the heat of the tablelamp, but also were something that jumpstarted my path to being a hobbyist poet/writer. That was when I was seven.
About what I wrote, and how I wrote, later, in •6. The Art of Never Finishing.