Breaking Away From Dyslexia: A Writer's Inspiring Struggle

A Very Short Story

In expression of regret, of pain, he sat at the desk in his head. A beautiful, roll-top affair he’d have been embarrassed to own had it been real.

Smooth paper, the pen like an extension of his arm and it dragged ink across the unblemished white with the slickness of a pond-skimmer. Trails of a deep and constant black, sentences never finished and paper discarded.

Thousands of words, started and finished as he tried to realize the truth of her. Finally, it comes like a haiku, a single-barrel bourbon or even the cliché strike of lightning: fine and burning bright the lines on the page like road flares and hazard lights.

"I loved you because I never had to explain to you why, as a grown man, I am still afraid of the dark."

The author of this amazingly succinct short story is Justin Porter.  Justin grew up in Lower Manhattan and left his home to live independently at the age of 18. All throughout childhood, Justin battled a host of health problems along with dyslexia. At school, Justin was part of the special education programme in order to remedy specific difficulties with reading and writing. 

Justin began writing at the age of 22 and despite all the issues he suffered with as a child, he put in all efforts to make sure that his first piece of writing got published immediately. He started out with hardboiled crime fiction and gradually moved on to writing with shades of magic realism, the occult and historical fiction. Justin has also done a lot of travel writing.

Justin considers getting published for the first time his biggest achievement. For him, moving onto writing with touches of magic realism and historical flavour was another major accomplishment. He thinks being part of the Januariad is yet another important feat. The Januariad is a writing project created by Jack Rusher in which those involved write new, complete and readable fiction every weekday for the first month of the new year. Initially that felt as a big challenge and he felt completely out of league but watching his stories change for the better in the course of that month renewed his belief that he was on the right track.  

Justin is highly appreciated for his dialogues which make his characters sound very natural and realistic. One would think that having established himself as a successful writer, writing has become more effortless for him. Yet Justin admits that he finds each word difficult and for him the hardest part of writing is allowing his own vulnerability to creep into the writing and taking risks that his depiction of characters might be seen as cheap, exploitative and two-dimensional by some of his readers. But when his readers confess that his writing resonates with them deeply, Justin just smiles feeling incredibly grateful and he feels the same about all the people who have published his work.

Most people, like me, suffer from “the perfect word syndrome” struggling for hours or even days before making a piece of our writing public. If we look at Justin’s struggle to overcome dyslexia and his other childhood health problems, even our worst writing nightmares will seem silly by comparison.

People seek fame, recognition and instantaneous adulation for their writing but few would admit as candidly as Justin, that  writing even a single word is difficult and the fact that writing is sheer hard work which doesn’t get any easier with time.

Justin serves as an inspiration to all of us as well as many aspiring writers. His life and work reinforces the fact that self-belief, determination and hard work can make anything possible.

Justin’s case would make even the harshest sceptic believe that dyslexia is an invaluable gift. We just need to break away from the mindset which makes us regard dyslexia as a curse.