Page 146 - Student: dazed And Confused

afterthought as to how it affected the world or other people. I was to write this about me
or the character who would represent me. There are no hidden studies of politics, society

or the class system - everything is as I remember things. The lines of poetry tended to focus

on I all the time, but that was a conscious decision to leave them like that and not rewrite
them as Cassie. I was told I should stick to one way of writing but it reads better to me for

the poetry to be I.

The word count of the piece is quite short at 2000 words so I had to write an outline

to decide what I really needed to get in and what I could leave out. As with all my work, I

did a couple of drafts then left it for a while before going back to it. I pared it down to just
below the word count from an initial 3500 or so. The parts about how I was pressured at

college or the rough estate I grew up on were not necessary, played no real part in my work

other than making me feel better by saying it - so I just cut them.
Speaking about my disability should have been therapeutic and cleansing - many

people say that writing an autobiography is - but it only succeeded in making me sad with

echoes of anger. Maybe the piece has been a touch clouded by that - perhaps that is a

good thing though. I decided to write about how it affects me as that's really all I can say

without lying or making it up.
It did not take very long to write the autobiographical piece once the words had started

coming out, but I had to, like I said, edit it quite a bit. Even though it looks complete and

finished I know I could come back to it in a month if I wanted and still find more to do to it.
There will always be a sentence that could have been better or a piece of dialogue that

sounds wrong, though a person finds that in everything he or she reads - the Curse of the

Writer. If there was more time maybe the piece would be better but equally I could destroy

it by way of self-doubt and breaking what isn't broken. I cannot pretend that what I have
written is fabulous or a literary breakthrough for me - more as a way to have a go at

something new. So I doubt that my autobiography will be hitting the shelves anytime soon.