When I was a kid in primary school, my teacher always used to asked me if one of my parent or a member in my family was a writer. My answer was always; NO!! Because I didn’t know anyone in my family who was a writer. As I grew older, and went to junior and senior high school, all my teachers asked the same questions and my answer remained the same. One day, I asked all of them, one after the other and there’s one answer that I still remember today and here is it; “THE ARRANGEMENTS OF YOUR WORDS AND THE STRUCTURE OF YOUR SENTENCE ARE SO UNIQUE. WHEN YOU WRITE A SHORT STORY IN YOUR LITERATURE CLASS, I CANNOT STOP READING IT (I ASK FOR YOUR PAPER EVERY TIME I KNOW THAT YOU HAD AN ASSIGNMENT OR WROTE A TEST THAT HAD A STORY SESSION). YOU SOUND LIKE YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR ARE DOING.I HOPE THAT YOU WILL GIVE WRITING A THOUGHT SOME DAY AND BE A WRITER.
Wasn’t that wonderful? Me, a teacher copy my paper and read it often? WOW.
My mom too couldn’t stop praising my writings. I thought she was just doing a mother’s duty. Until I wrote two journal article during the ebola crisis in Liberia. These article were all about Ebola and the positive approaches communities were using to stay safe. My boss could stopped talking about them at all her meetings. She didn’t rest until she had them published (of course she did some editing and the publisher added flavor). I started receiving comments from people that I didn’t know and they were so mind blowing. And guess what? My those articles were use in other countries that were also experiencing Ebola.
And that left me with this question, did I inherit my writing skills or did I learned it along the way without knowing? Now it’s your time to wonder about this (if you are a writer, share your ideas).
About JosephineMonger
Josephine Monger holds a BSW in social work from the Stella Maris Polytechnic, the Founder of the Elections & Us Project, a 2017 Humphrey Fellowship finalist, a YALI RLC Nigeria N2 Cohort participant, a YALI Elections TechCamp Ghana 2016 participant and currently working as a project associate at the United Nations Development Programme-Liberia.
Read more about Josephine here
