Lazette Gifford
Publisher & Editor
zette@cableone.net

 

The Spark

By David Bridger
© 2006,
David Bridger


Can you remember the spark? The magic moment? The first instant when you knew beyond all reasonable doubt that you were put on this earth to be a writer?

When did that happen to you? Where did it happen? How?

Was there someone who saw it in you and helped you, encouraged you, drew the spark from deep inside you and fanned it to a flame?

Who was that?

It was late September 1970. I was thirteen years and two hundred and forty eight days old. I’d just worked that out on the inside back cover of my English Grammar text book.

Winker Watson strolled up and down the aisles between our desks, handing back homework essays, announcing grades, picking boys at random, engaging them with questions in an effort to keep our undivided attention on him rather than on the panoramic views from our wall-to-wall fourth floor classroom windows.

Yeah, right.

A bright autumn morning in Wallasey, on the Wirral Peninsular, in the north west of England. To the north of us flowed the busy brown River Mersey, underlining a dark and glinting Liverpool skyline. Over our right shoulders in the distance, beyond a wide green spread of mossland, stood the huge loading cranes of Birkenhead docks, giant stooping sillhouettes that never failed to remind me of The War of the Worlds. On our left, out of sight behind hills of red brick housing, was the River Dee and the Welsh mountains. Before us lay rough open fields and a strip of sand dunes and the chopping Irish Sea.

I gazed out to the sharp horizon. That’s where I wanted to be. That’s where I belonged. I'd scribbled this homework in record time earlier in the week, rushing to get out on the water one last time before winter set in. On Saturday I would haul my boat out and...

...suddenly I was back in the silent classroom and Winker was standing at the front, holding attention, holding the one remaining essay, holding my gaze.

Uh oh.

He read it out loud.

Boys nudged one another and grinned. Bridger's in the brown and sticky, hee hee hee.

Yeah. Thanks, mates.

I tried not to blush or let my brave stare waver. Whatever happened, I knew I had to face this down. All I needed to do was deny everything. I mustn’t concede that I’d dashed this essay off in half an hour, at the very most, rather than spending the required two hours of weekly homework time allocated for English Language. I could bluff it through with a display of innocent stupidity. C’mon, I could do this!

Winker finished reading the evidence. Our eyes met briefly and I steeled myself.

Weirdly, though, he didn’t throw my homework back in disgust. And the expected interrogation never came. Instead, he started picking the essay to pieces and explaining how I'd achieved this effect, these emotions, this contrast, that balance… and I realised he liked the thing. He liked it! It was good!

The classroom was very quiet.

He handed my essay back and gave a name to the light that was dawning on my mental horizon.

"You are a writer."

Thanks, Winker.

That’s when I knew. I didn’t know what kind of writer I would become or where my work would take me. I had no idea what sort of apprenticeship I would serve or if I would ever be successful. I didn’t even know what success meant, right there and then.

But right there and then I knew in my marrow that I was a writer, already, simply by virtue of being born. It’s who and what I was put on this earth to be.

You too. You are a writer. You are, you know, or you wouldn’t be reading this now. It doesn’t matter if, at this stage in your career, you are published or unpublished, rewarded or unrewarded, appreciated or unappreciated. Those things will come or they won’t come. They’re important. Of course they are. But they’re not who you are.

You are a writer. You just are. That’s your spark!