Blog 3762 – 02.28.26
Creative Writing
Fifty-eight years ago I was completing the second semester of my senior year in high school. At the last minute I had changed my mind about attending Chattanooga High School and got on the bus for Chattanooga Central High School instead beginning my sophomore year in September of 1965 in an entirely different place. Several of my ninth grade classmates at East Lake Junior High had also opted to go to Central so I was not alone.
Before East Lake, I had attended three different elementary schools spending two years at each. More than a few of the classmates that I met at those schools had attended Eastside Junior High instead of East Lake since they lived in that district. It was only in High School that we had the option to attend whichever of the several local public schools that we chose.
I chose Central rather than City over a girl who had broken my heart just a few weeks before classes started. I just could not bear the thought of waiting at the bus stop with her each morning knowing that she was now dating a popular senior at City High and so I joined my near neighbor Ric waiting a block away to take the bus to Central.
At Central I reconnected with many of the classmates I had known previously at other schools and met many that I had never known before. After my sophomore and junior years at Central, the Class of 1968 became the top dogs. We had paid our dues and made it to the pinnacle of the high school hierarchy.
In the twelfth grade I had two classes that were my favorites Journalism Two and an advanced English class called Creative Writing. As Editoral Editor of the high school paper, The Digest, I had a column on page two called In My Opinion. Below is an example.
In Creative Writing class we spent our time writing essays and reading them aloud to be critiqued by the teacher and our fellow classmates. I, from boyhood, had wanted to be a writer so I was as they say “in hog heaven.”
Though my dream of making my living as a writer never came true, eleven years ago this spring after attending a weekend writer’s seminar in Chicago I began this daily blog. Some say one is not a real writer unless they are paid for their words. I say “freely I have received so freely I give.” The only pay any true writer seeks is to be read. Though my audience may not be as large as some, I am read daily around the world. So I can say and mean with a happy heart that I am living the dream, creatively writing my daily column called: theencouragingword.co
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David James White
Fred Astaire – Cheek to Cheek
theencouragingword 