Ninth grade bored the hell outta me until Mr. Adamski caught me carving my wooden desk with a dull Girl Scout penknife, caught me marking territory with a tool as deliberate as a male bulldog’s piss. I rubbed soft graphite into the cat scratch arroyo until it shone dull black ache.

BJ loves DF

I carved a heart, an arrow, an impossibility. Dean loved cheerleader Cindy with the feathered hair, didn’t notice me and the tarnished saxophone I hauled to school.

“Ms. Jaworski.”

He blew out the Ms. on a long exhale with an accent just west of Boston. My New England town grew teachers like him, second-generation Polish with a deep respect of education. He must have been twenty-eight years old, twenty-nine. His hair hung in oily ringlets around the collar of his Nehru jacket, and he wore tight striped pants over dirty Earth shoes. I stared at those shoes, at the brown crepe soles, didn’t meet his eyes.

Mr. Adamski held out his hand. I handed him the weapon and kissed my afternoon goodbye.

“Ms. Jaworski. I’m giving you detention. I’ll see you at 3.”

I slumped into his homeroom after the last bell. The room seemed to shrug its shoulders. I was no stranger to detention. I slid into my desk and open a manila folder labeled with my name.

You may think English is boring. Here’s your chance to make it exciting. Write a story about a giant cockroach. Leave it on my desk.

A giant cockroach? A giant cockroach?! I rolled my eyes. The room giggled. I ripped a page from my wire-bound notebook and began to write. My pencil caught the dips in my desk, the scars I created. The paper snagged. I still remember my first sentence.

Most people in this town don’t realize the High School principal has a secret life as an undercover cockroach.

This time I giggled with the room. Mr. Cionovich unzipped his human suit most evenings, chased dogs, tortured a cheerleader who looked suspiciously like Cindy, danced with a chicken bone in one hooked appendage. I didn’t know Kafka, but I wrote with him, feasted with him on rich description dripping with melted expectation, wrote with the kind of pathos only those age thirteen with acne can ever understand.

I left Mr. Adamski a thousand words, two thousand words, each letter slightly larger than the one prior, until the final pages contained prose so fast, so rounded, as huge as my sly spy cockroach that he must have had to stand on the opposite side of the room to read it.

“Dad! Dad!”

I slammed the door behind me, ran to my father. He sat in the kitchen, the newspaper spread across the picnic table at which we ate every meal. I slid onto the bench beside him.

“Dad! I know what I wanna be! I wanna be a writer!”

I grinned. My hands shook from fatigue, from the discovery they could do more than level scars and honk out glowworm on the sax. My father cleared his throat. He didn’t stop reading. His eyes moved evenly, slowly across a column detailing the recent Town Hall meeting. I counted three blinks.

“Birdie, writers are a dime a dozen. You’ll never make it as a writer. Don’t bother trying. You’ll just end up let down. Great writers are rare. You’re not one of them. Better to study science. There’s money in science. There’s no money in writing.”

I didn’t smile when Mr. Adamski gave me the thumbs up during my next English class. I didn’t write another word for twenty years.

Maybe you’re like me. Maybe writing seems like the gift of the blessed, of the achingly smart. Maybe you think you don’t have what it takes to tell a good story. Maybe someone told you your prose stunk rotten skunk cabbage. I’m here to tell you different, to show you different. A few years ago I decided Dime A Dozen was just fine, thank you very much. I grabbed a pen. Cockroaches, beware!

Welcome to Words in a Row. Each Tuesday, I will present a new writing lesson. These won’t be your typical writing prompts. They won’t discuss grammar or spelling. I’m going to take your hand, your heart, and hand you a giant cockroach. Writers of all styles, “levels” (ugh, don’t believe in that anyway), and expectations welcome. I will highlight some wonderful examples of writing from the BlogHer blogroll at the end of each lesson. And I want to see your writing, too! These lessons will include as much discussion as you want and need “after class” in the comments section.

Words in a Row schedule through July:

July 17: Bad Ideas

Everyone who writes gets the million-buck question from at least one person: “Where do you get your ideas?” When first faced with writer’s block, I discovered a new way of looking at my search for ideas.

July 24: Animal, Mineral, Vegetable?

Every story needs an anchor. How to find the central person, place, or thing that gives your story meaning, depth.

July 31: Outline or Go with the Flow?

Some writers despise outlining, swear it hinders creativity. Others can’t complete a work without a solid skeleton set to paper. How to find the method of crafting a story that works best for you, and one surprising idea I bet you’ve never, ever tried.

Birdie Jaworski blogs at La Pajaro. Birdie teaches writing to seventh and eighth graders at an Expeditionary Learning school. Her book of New Mexican short stories is being published this fall.