My Family has Been Corrupted

By G.Ellen

Okay, I have to say not all of my children got the writing gene. My oldest daughter can write up a storm and my oldest son loves to invent worlds of fighting and armies and--ugh. But the second and third daughter could care less. In fact, my youngest daughter hates to pick up a pencil. She would rather read...(I guess that's not necessarily bad)

Case in point–the other night I was helping her write an essay for school. It had to be a ‘self reflective’ essay. It took us a while to figure out what that meant... Anyway, she kept complaining that she didn’t LIKE to write; moreover, she hated writing anything about herself. (This is the same girl that somehow got enrolled in a creative writing class and struggled to come up with anything to turn in.)

We finally came down to where I told her to “write about how much you hate to write!” Sigh. She finally wrote about how she confuses everyone and is a shy person. She started rambling toward the middle of the essay and ended up leaving one feeling a little confused as to what she was writing about in the first place, so I titled it “My Rambling Self Reflection” for her. (I was typing it so she could get the most homework done–did I mention she is a senior in high school?)

So–obviously this daughter missed out. I could have waxed eloquent on all sorts of self reflections. I do it weekly in my other blogs. (Grin) I don’t think essays are my favorite writing medium, but hey–I’d give it a whirl.

My oldest daughter tells me her writing drive is all my fault. I gave all the children little notebooks one summer and said they had to write a story in them by the time school started. She was the only one that did the full story. . .and hasn’t stopped. It’s enough to make a mother proud. In fact, she has written an excellent start to a fantasy story that I informed her she was going to finish and get published–or else. She wanted to know what the ‘or else’ was.

My husband tells me that it’s all my doing–I’ve corrupted the family. (He says this tongue in cheek–he has several story ideas himself.) I figure it’s not necessarily a bad thing. At least none of the children have decided to shave their heads and run off with a commune or expressed a desire to find meaning in the croaking of the rainforest tree frog...