Can I Do It

 

I feel the decision to write your hub is a statement in itself that you have overcome your problems in part.

As you know I am a published writer of whom you have helped, advices, directed from you first reviewed my book and who are working with as I write my first novel. For a poet I find writing a novel very challenging and have many times thought of giving up, I can truly say it is by your constant emails asking me a simple question  “How is it going” that has made me push on to complete it. I have always found your ability’s way beyond any discrepancies you may think you have.

I was diagnosed as dyslexic and mildly Autistic. I personally think that may be Latin for “Ass***) but I figure that the joy of doing something you love with a disability makes it all the more beautiful because you discover yourself in a new light.

 

After all if you make a mistake you have a good excuse for it and can claim the reasons for them (just joking)

 

As you may see in this hub I mix up or miss words and cannot get to grips with punctuation and grammar and most of all with spelling but just because I splash in the water a bit doesn’t mean I cannot swim and reach the other side.

 

One tip I discovered for people like us that can help was written in a book you recommended I should buy.

Read out loud your words before you give them to someone. “The voice in your head is different than the voice in your throat”

When you read aloud it lets you here where you have gone wrong in regard to missing words that your brain and mind already have set in place with your mind voice. However it doesn’t help my spelling J

 

My history meant that I was deterred from writing until I was 38 years old I am now 43. This was partly due to an education system with a tick box mark sheet that didn’t allow for any hidden talent. If you didn’t fit the script or veered from the set pattern you where stupid. They didn’t see any potential in me because they weren’t looking for it.

 

A lot is also my fault in not pursing what I really wanted to do, therefore wasting in some ways almost 40 years.

 

However those 40 years got me experience maturity and three wonderful daughters.

 

I could say, and sometime would, why did I listen to them and stop writing or why did I waist all those years? Instead of  saying why didn’t I listen to myself.

 

 I have even told myself, maybe I am not at all gifted in any writing capacity and have awakened into a world of self belief at 38.

 

I like to think that none of this really matters because people have read my work and some liked it. I have a thought I keep in my head which has always kept me real.

30% of the people will love you 30% of the people will hate you and the rest don’t give a shit.

What matters is you are communicating to yourself as much as the readers in this world now and the world to come and through this medium of writing, long after you are gone you will be heard no matter if it is good or bad!

 

My work has allowed me the privilege of reading at the opening of the all Ireland Literature Festival and the Guinness Irish Folk festival mixing with the cream if Irish literature, met poets and the author of The story that became a Hollywood Move. So in some ways you could say I jumped the fence of educational achievement to get into the party.

 If I look at it from just this perspective I have already made it even if I where to have sold just one book.

 

My first book published that was all my own work was poetry which is an acquired taste the other I published in anthologies with other writer.

 

My poems are all story and observances of my life and the world in Ireland and philosophical by nature, in way poetry gives you a second chance in life.

Novel writing is a huge leap forward; the end result has yet to be revealed!

 

Colin T Mercer

Author of For Irish Eyes