I had heard much about him and looked forward to meeting this exciting teacher, but shortly after I moved to the new school, I saw right through him and always thought he was a fraud. However, I did not trust my instincts and assumed that my inability to appreciate his brilliance was a failure in myself. But I think he perceived what I felt and perhaps that’s why he slapped me down.

He said it in a subdued matter-of-fact tone, a mere observation, one of those facts which one must simply accept. What can one do, after all, if the boy has no imagination?

That he was vicious and petty was later borne out by his treatment of his wife and his suspension by the school principal as a pedophile. Only many years later did I learn that he had himself been brutalized as a child.

But he had published a book on creative writing and who was I to question him at the time? A tormented teen, with an abysmal academic record and a terrible sense of self; a failure with “no imagination” into the bargain.

English had been my best subject until then. I moved to a new school and although I was praised for my creative writing by my new teachers, that comment clung like some super-powered barnacle to my consciousness that, to this day, has not been prized completely free , echoing, I imagine, ( me? imagine?) like a bad Hollywood depiction of torment sometimes when I try to write or think about my writing, ” no,no, no, no, imagine, imagine, imagination, nationnationnationnonononomaginationnonnnno.” I jolt up or awake, clutching my pen, frozen, sweat-drenched, panting, heaving, moaning, even drowning.

Well, not quite. But It hovers over me like a mosquito, whining and invisible and therefore probably invincible when I’m trying to write a story. And then I can’t seem to finish anything. “No imagination, that’s why, of course. Haven’t you got it yet? Well that’s the whole point, you can’t imagine…”

But I have done a whole lot of writing over the past couple of years. I just need to inhale , inspire and just write. It feels as though this is what you’re saying; just let yourself breathe. Is it an accident that inspiration means the same thing as breathing?

Just write! So much power in doing just that. 🙂