A Public Apology

Ahem...

To every Language Arts teacher who ever had the misfortune to try and teach me the range of skills needed to become proficient in using the English language, especially the mechanics of writing:

To Mr. White who stood on his desk and read Shakespeare in an effort to make us Grade Nine nincompoops listen.  To Mr. Reid who read my first attempts at short stories and encouraged me to keep writing. (Naturally, being too cool for school, I didn't.) To Jim Pehura, my grade 11 and 12 L.A. teacher and later my friend, thanks for telling me I was copping out when I tried to down grade from university level to general English courses. And to Ms. Nobel, Mrs. Hewlit,  Mrs. Mackintosh, Mrs. Fullerton, and Mrs. Dewar, (and the rest of my primary school teachers whose names I have conveniently erased from memory), who laboured to drill grammar, spelling and neat penmanship into my fuzzy, daydreamin' little head, I am really, really, sorry!

Sorry for not paying attention in class (although the pictures that I doodled were mighty pretty.) Sorry for not doing my home work.  Sorry my never-ending whispering, humming, giggling and other lapses in good judgement.  Sorry for day dreaming instead of learning about verbs, nouns, articles, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, dangling and misplaced modifiers, interrupting modifiers, verb tenses, subject-verb agreement, pronoun agreement, relative clauses and relative pronouns, comparative and superlative forms, modal auxiliary verbs (huh?), idiomatic construction (what?), commas, periods, question marks, apostrophes, quotation marks, colons and semicolons, and exclamation marks!  Oh - and run-on sentences.

You see, at the time I had other career goals in mind.  Ballerinas dance their dances, not write about them. Doctor's remove tonsils, not dangling participles. And I am sure that my heroine diva Diana Ross hired someone else to write all those songs. What did I need to know about writing for?

Well, at it turns out, I needed to learn  this stuff because now that I've finally grown up, I have discovered that I am a writer. Actually, at present, I am a scribe for all the voices in my head, and for some reason, they insist that I write down every dang thing they say.

And Mr. Ligowski, who referred to me as "Hey you, with the glasses" in grade 8. In spite of your predictions, as it turns out, I didn't end up living in a van down by the river... at least not yet.

Lastly, a shout out to Mr. Greene, my Grade 11 Math teacher who valiantly tried to teach me geometry and algebra.  You gave me an exemption for the final math exam as long as I promised not to ever study math again as long as you were alive.  I kept that promise and as a result, I have am now a writer and not a Quantum Physicist. Thanks dude!

In summary, I am really, really, sorry.  I'll try to do better. And for my beta reader and editor (not going to name her until my book is published) I am absolutely, totally, completely, and awfully sorry; and eternally grateful.

It's me, Jan!