Flowers for Algernon changed the game

I was a late bloomer in most aspects of my life. I was skinny wee guy. My voice broke late on in high school and even now im 29 and I still cant grow a decent beard. Reading was no different. I got told I was dislexic when I was 14, it explained the dread of not understanding pages. I was jelous of my cousins who could read adult books while I was in the base class with biff chip and kipper. But on the street I was a bit of a sponge, I mean could pick up rythms of speech like mad, I could imitate voicesvoces and I even made up my own absurd lingo, I was unstoppable that way and the world was my book. My family were great story tellerstellers too.

My mum, she sang limmerics and songs like this David and goliath ballad that I always loved and my father read call of the wild to me and so slowly it was revealing itself, wordsmithery and story telling was part of me like its in us all. But the game really changed when I studied Flowers for Algernon at school. Maybe It was the simplicity of the language. The way it shone a little light on an unlikely hero. It tugged the heart strings. It was banned too I belive a lot of the time I love banned books. I could relate to FFA on so many levels. The non fiction diary form was so digestible. The foreshadowing imagery of algernon, the mouse, was so rich. The way it captured speech patterns which evolved and transformed with the story. I knew then that I loved books. It was my inner algernon, wispering ’you will write too buddy, keep reading, just take it slow, read slow, enjoy learning. Read like your favourite boxers box, go forward into the unknown, if you go down, get up and go again. Try to write like sugar Ray Robinsón boxed. Something changed in me at a subconsciouss conscious level. I was Even More curiois about people and life. I befriended many little books. I carried pocket books in jackets for months. I Never left home without one. They became my road companions, on buses and trains and on hill walks. I read and wrote poems, notes, ideas, ballads and I never stopped. The world in motion is the big poem. Thats why

I will always be thankful to Flowers for algernon for sparking my love for litterature. And 2020 during this strange time I rolled the dice and comitted to writing full time and now im halfway through my debut novel. I will keep reading and writing regardless of what happens because its part of who I am.