Dustin has writing in his blood. He’s like me – he does it daily and thrives on it. In his heart of hearts he wants to be a writer but he worries profusely about being able to support himself, and a future family on a writing career. His concerns aren’t without merit. Becoming a writer is not so unlike telling people you’re moving out to Hollywood to become an actor. The profession is replete with rejection. Wisely, he does realize he needs something steady, especially at first, to “fall back on.” So he is now in college to become a middle school or high school English teacher. He loves kids, has a gift of teaching, and will teach to support his future family and his love of writing. He is a step beyond me already. At 18 he has already been paid for a writing job and that didn’t happen for me till’ I was quite a number of years older than him. I believe I was 24 or 25 before I got paid for my first article.
Recently in his college English class he had to write an essay about a process. Most people were doing something very serious and talking about intricate processes and Dustin decided to take a stab at something humorous and off the wall. He did a whole fun spiel on “the process of making a sandwich.” His professor was amazed at his creativity, his wittiness and the way he crafted the story. But he was also very skeptical. He told Dustin outright that he had doubts and asked him to turn the paper in to a website that checks papers for plagiarism. Dustin confidently said, “Great, I’ll be glad to turn it in right now!” which he did and the teacher gave him a weird look. I love it!!! My son is accused of possible plagiarism and it’s such an honor because he is not guilty…he is just a FANTASTIC WRITER!
By the way, the teacher did check his paper with that website, and proved it was really Dustin's writing and he aced the assignment!
Comments
Man, an 18 year-old kid is ahead of me in getting stuff published?!?!? That's it...no t.v. for me for a month, LOL!!!!!