Unconventional

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Yesterday my daughter Kelly left a remark on my facebook page after reading something I had written that said "I wish I could write like you."  I studied it for a moment and then responded by saying she could if she just wrote what she felt. Later I revisited that exchange and thought a little more about it and decided to write this piece to find a way to embellish my response, to do it in a way that better explains what I was trying to say to her. The truth is I believe she can do anything she sets her mind to, she is a very bright girl and I believe that she can and does write well. The difference here between she and I is that I write more than she does and that doesn't make me a better writer, just someone who does it more and in a different way.

We are all writers, we all write things through the course of any given day but most people write to express a singular thought at a time whereas I write  more words to make longer sentences that make up paragraphs to tell longer stories. When she said she wished she could write like me my response back to her was in the same general terms most people write. I do believe she could write just as good as anyone but if we were having that discussion in another forum besides facebook I would have expounded on that thought by saying more than I did. What she received was the text equivalent of two people exchanging words in a brief conversation while banging their fingers on a keypad. I am not a texter and I have never sent nor read a text message because I still don't understand people's delight in doing something like that and because when my fingers hit a keypad I am very conscience of word usage and spelling, even though I don't always get it right and sometimes miss a few when I write.

I am in no hurry to learn a new language at this late stage of the game and if I were I would rather exhaust my energy studying Russian or another one that most people in America wouldn't understand. There is no challenge in the texting language to make it attractive enough to me to want to do it well. However, learning the language the Russians speak would feel like a real accomplishment! If I could do that then I could really say to most people what is either on my mind or what I think of them and still make them smile regardless of what I said to them. They wouldn't know one way or the other. It would be both exhilarating and liberating to speak freely to anyone I don't care for in a tongue that allowed me to get some things off my chest without hurting anyone's feelings or leaving them to think more lowly of me than they might already do.

To me, texting is just a lazy way to exchange thoughts and a convenient way for people with spelling disabilities to hide their ineptness. Using abbreviations, symbols and numbers instead of real words is much easier than opening a dictionary for people who can't spell and don't have the time or the zeal to learn. It works well for both parties who go back and forth like that because the other person probably suffers the same lack of abilities or because both are just too busy to concern themselves with remembering what the schools once believed was an important skill. Could you imagine trying to filter through and understand what I have written so far in this post if it were in text language? I am not sure but I think these whole words, especially if most of them are spelled right make a more pleasant reading experience than if I took the easiest route to get where I want this story to go.

Now, a skilful and experienced texter who writes most of the time using one letter or one number to make a word might prefer that I impart my thoughts as they would but I am a stubborn old soul who refuses to downgrade my ability to share thoughts through the written text simply because it is easier and takes less time. I am not that busy with my life, I have the time. After all, I was forced to learn to spell way back in grammar school and I don't want that skill to now go to waste just because the rest of the world says it is okay. To me that would be akin to telling me that all of the arithmetic I had to struggle through for all of those years was a waste of time and so was the summer I had to spend in summer school to keep from failing a grade. I want to believe that all of it mattered. I still want to use the skills I learned all through my life if only to feel that I wasn't duped when the teachers and mentors made me sit and learn what they swore I would someday need! 

Texting is like calculators. I have a calculator but I rarely need it and where I find satisfaction and joy in not needing it is in knowing that I don't. It doesn't make me a smart man, it makes me a capable one and I feel good about that. Just another small triumph in life that separates me from an ignorant man.

Back to Kelly; I know she can spell because when she does write something to me she uses real words and they all look just fine, moreover, they all come together and make sense the way they should. Writing good stories is an art that requires those things and in that regard Kelly could write like me. The difference would be the content and that is where her work and mine would be vastly different. That is the area where my writing is different from most writers period! Kelly couldn't write exactly like me because she is a very polite person and she worries more than I ever could about saying the wrong thing. She is very careful with her vocabulary and will go out of her way to not offend anyone. When I said to her that she could write like me I meant it, but in order to write like me she would have to throw caution to the wind and write as I do, how she really feels. That is precisely what I said to her; the exchange on facebook went like this; "I wish I could write like you." - "You can, just write what you feel."

I am among the ranks of anyone who regards my work as how Webster's describes it; not conventional, not bound by or in accordance with convention, being out of the ordinary, an unconventional thinker. A person like that who has chosen to become a writer who writes what he feels instead of what he wants others to see in his work is someone like me. That is the singular difference in what I write and what Kelly could write. There is not now, nor has there ever been anything conventional about my personality. Mine isn't for everyone and I couldn't live with myself if it were. I never wanted to be that guy and although it is far from mainstream it has served me well in terms of being everywhere I wanted to be and doing everything I ever wanted to do.

Why would I ever tinker with something like that? Something that has worked so well for as long as it has for me and try to change it now? I regard the ability to always be the real me, regardless of someone else's opinion as a gift! One that I hope to keep and protect for as long as I live. I don't need anyone's approval to do anything anymore and I don't seek it; that is why when Kelly or someone else reads my work might say, "I wish I could write like you." 

I couldn't write like me if I were any different. To write like I do one would have to have the means and the desire. My desire should be evident to anyone by now and I have the means. It has become much easier since I retired because something that comes with retirement is something far more important than being liked by a lot of people and needed to do what a lot of people need me to do; time and an attitude that can be all mine! No more answering another person's bell or come when they whistle, no longer being required to do something that makes someone else look good or make more money for us both. Nobody needs anything I have and everything I would be willing to give to someone else now comes with strings attached.

They aren't long or complicate strings, just strings that make doing something or going somewhere as beneficial for me as it is for them. Simple strings that cannot be tied around me as tightly as they once were and the understanding that when one of us is ready to cut them we can with no hard feelings. I became able to write in the method I do when I cut a lot of strings that held me back from doing it. The desire and the ability was always there but retirement gave me the means. All I needed was to gather up all of the rule books and instruction manuals someone else handed me and use them for fuel in a virtual bonfire.

Kelly can write like me, it will take awhile before she can do it but someday she will be able to take out her scissors as I did and cut the strings she is bound by now. But do it with the words and expressions I use may be the real challenge for her because I don't see her being as rough around the edges as I am. It takes that too.

To date I have written and published 17 books of short stories. 

Please visit Amazon at the link below to see more examples of my work. Thank you.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=rickery+dickery+books