How To Take Your Readers Into Reality, Rather Than Out of It
Change your reading habits and you’ll improve your writing
We all have people who pass through our lives leaving an impact that reverberates until we shuffle off this mortal coil.
At least I hope you do.
Mine was Mr. Phelps, my English teacher for just one year during high school. We called him Captain White Woolly because, rain or shine, he wore a thick white woolly sailor’s pullover. He also had the facial growth to match his seafaring style, donning a beard so bushy a platoon of Ewoks could hide in it. Whenever he read aloud passages from some classic piece of literature, he would stroke his beard gently and little spears and slingshots would drop out, sometimes even a catapult.
Captain White Woolly had tasked us with writing an essay. At the time, I was a 17-year-old boy obsessed with boxing. In my mind, I was going to be a pro. I trained twice a day: a run in the morning and gym in the evening. What did I care about writing? I was a lean, mean, bantamweight fighting machine. To me, writing was a waste of time; I had more important things to do. Only one problem, no essay = no graduating from the class. So, with pen in hand (we had those things in them ye olde days) I began scribbling away. What about?
