Annie F. Downs - Speak Love. Making Your Words Matter

I started writing on February 21, 2006. Wait.

Let me back up.

Ive always loved writing and reading. My maternal grandmother was a high school librarian and my paternal grandparents owned a used bookstore, so I probably teethed on novels.

I read voraciously as a childit was rare that a book was not within reach. I read in the car, when I should have been sleeping, at the dinner table, and in the bathtub. Which, I am sorry to tell you, did lead to a few soaked books, namely Harriet the Spy and Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself. Have you ever dropped a book in the bathtub? The panic-induced behavior that follows is hilarious and splashy and full of wrinkled pages and regrets.

I only remember attempting to write one book as a kid, a dramatic retelling of a seventh-grade library book where the main characters best friend is in the hospital. My renditionwritten in pencil on lined paper in a three-ring notebookwas three chapters long and absolutely terrible, but the original story was pretty terrible too (and not much longer than my version), so I blame my first literary failure on bad mentorship.

While I may not be one of those authors who wrote books throughout her childhood, I always told stories. Maybe it is because Im from Georgia and this is the Southern way, but my memories are full of storytelling nights on the front porch or at my grandparents house across the driveway or down at the local campground every August when it was Camp Meeting. For you guys not from around these parts, quick explanation: The campground is full of cabins and then one big pavilion. Every August, families from East Cobb United Methodist Church go across the streetyes, the campground is literally across the street from the church buildingsand stay there, and they have church meetings every night. And at every meal and in the cool of the evening, people sit around and tell stories. I soaked them up, hearing tales from one hundred years ago in that very spot.

Heres an interesting side note about Camp Meeting: When I was a senior in high school, my youth pastor hit a line drive in the softball game and the softball (which is not even a little bit soft) hit me right in the nose. And broke it. And I have the lump on my nose to this day to prove it. Check it out next time were in the same place.

See? Im a storyteller.

I come from a long line of storytellers and story-enjoyers. Unfortunately for me, fairly early in my life, ugly crept into the purity of storytelling. And I started to lie.

My first real memory of lying was in the first grade. Alex, in my class, had a crush on an older girl who rode my bus. I dont recall her name, but she was tall and had stringy blonde hair to her shoulders. I told him she was my cousin. He started bringing toy cars to school to give to her; he would hand them to me expecting me to give them to her since, you know, she was my blood relative and all.

Truth? I never spoke to her once. I lined the cars up on my bookshelf and told Alex that stringy-haired blonde loved them. I told elaborate stories of how she responded when I gave them to her.