Life as a Dyslexic Writer

Life is unfair. We have all heard stories of the neglected, overlooked and/or severely disadvantaged protagonist who fights against all odds to achieve their dreams. One of the many reasons why Harry Potter resonated so well with people is because it is a story of a boy battling his demons and emerging victorious. Every one of us has a demon of our own.

For some the demons maybe obvious and visible. Exposed for the cruel world to see, point and laugh. But for others, it's hidden. A silent, insidious darkness that gnaws and gnaws at the souls of the people. My demon is of the latter kind and I'd like to speak about my battle with this demon. Today, I want to tell my story.

My demon's name is Dyslexia. Sounds fancy I know, but it's not. This demon has troubled me all my life. It has been present in every single achievement and failure. My omnipresent, omnipotent enemy with whom I battle day in and day out. Today I want to stand up and tell my story. Because today I want to shout out and say- Dyslexia, screw you!

Before I delve any further, it's imperative that I explain what Dyslexia is. According to Wikipedia, Dyslexia, also known as reading disorder, is characterized by trouble with reading despite normal intelligence. Different people are affected to varying degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, reading quickly, writing words, "sounding out" words in the head, pronouncing words when reading aloud and understanding what one reads. Often these difficulties are first noticed at school. The difficulties are involuntary and people with this disorder have a normal desire to learn.

But it is also so much more than that. Dyslexia is a disability that effects the language skills. It hampers directionality. It makes people appear bright but their performance is often “not up to their true potential”. And not just language, it effects Math as well.

Just like everybody else, for a dyslexic person too, every day brings in a new challenge. Looking at a messy or cluttered poster can bring about stone cold panic, inducing a couple of days of nightmares. Talking to more than two people at the same time can become an unsurmountable pressure. Driving to a new place can give us anxiety attacks. New currencies don’t make any sense and it can take us years to understand and work with a different currency. But all of that is not the reason why I want to talk about this problem. What I want to talk about are the problems I face as a writer and how dyslexia becomes the monkey on my back.

A dyslexic writer is perhaps irony personified, like a colorblind painter or a hydrophobic swimmer. A writer wields words, for they are their weapons. However, for a dyslexic person, words, written or spoken, are the biggest challenge. Let me enumerate a few ways in which words become a challenge for a dyslexic person. (And I am only talking about adults. For kids, it’s a different ballgame altogether.)

1. New words: New, complex words are incomprehensible. Even if we see the meaning and see the usage, it takes a while for the comprehension to happen. And I do not mean a few minutes. I mean days.

2. Reading: Sudden change in font, random capitalization or an abrupt change in tone will make the text indecipherable. If I were to draw parallels as to how it feels, imagine driving on a known road when there is a speedbump where there was none. Immediately after you have navigated the bump, you end up in an unfamiliar alley that is a dead end with no sight of the familiar road anywhere.

3. Punctuation: Put a comma where you take a pause, they said. I put a comma where I take a pause. But that is not where you take a pause, they said. Sigh!

4. Spelling: Let’s just say we’re not going to win any spelling bees. Thank heavens for autocorrect!

5. Pronunciation: We are so bad at pronunciations, we can give material to standup comedians. And we are not even consistent in our bad pronunciation. We mispronounce words, and then we spell out words just as we (wrongly) pronounce them and so our misspelled words are also not consistent. What a mess!

6. Coherence: Coherence? What’s that? Oh look, butterfly! So pretty. I had to get some potatoes from the market. And… what? What are you looking at?

7. Homonyms: Arguably one of our biggest challenges. For a dyslexic, language revolves around phonetics. And homonyms, i.e. words that have similar sounds but mean something completely different, throw us off.

8. Handwriting: Oh our handwritings are so bad. Mainly because at a subconscious level, we try to hide our bad spellings and poor linguistic skills. If we couldn’t type, dyslexic writers would be a myth. For no one would be able to read what we wrote.

But it’s not all bad. Dyslexia (funnily, I managed to misspell it here as I was typing. Word automatically corrected it) is both a curse and a boon. Dyslexics are incredibly creative people. I must thank this demon of mine for it is the reason I churn out stories. It is what makes me write.

In closing, all I would like to say is – face your demons. Accept that they are a part of you and learn to work with them. It’s an arduous task, one where you will not always emerge victorious. There are days it will bog you down and stifle you. But there are days when you will get up and kick that demon right where it hurts the most. And there is nothing more satisfying than emerging victorious against a demon you’ve battled all your life. So get up, and get fighting!

#Dyslexia #Writing #Demons