Nikos Panaousis

I was never an avid reader as a kid.

Though I always liked the idea of having read—and of having written.

But, reading, for me, was always a chore and a cognitively strenuous activity. Even fiction.

I despised that I couldn’t read like my friends or compose like other students of my age.

And, so, I had decided, from early on, that I hated reading and writing.

“I am just not made for this kind of life,” I admitted to myself and swiftly moved on.

Then, the years passed, and I found myself in a windowless classroom, filled with drowsy students—a short Indian professor standing in front of the whiteboard, her eyes gleaming with enthusiasm, hope, and eagerness for attention.

I looked at her and I pondered, how can a human being have so much passion for literature? Why would anyone want to analyze the shallow symbolism of a century-old story? Perhaps the author never intended to implant any meaning in that piece of text, and we are just wasting our time, I pessimistically declared to myself.

But, as the days passed, and my mornings became a routine of the same passionate professor, professing her love for the written word, something inside me began to change.

I was starting to gradually immerse myself, inadvertently and without conscious effort, into a world I had long banished from my daily existence—because I once failed to push against the cognitive barriers on the other side of which a world of wonders awaited.

One day, after class, as the drowsy crowd was leaving the classroom for their next lesson of the day, the professor motioned me over and asked me whether I wanted to participate in a writing challenge. I had never written a proper paragraph in my life, except for school assignments, I reluctantly admitted to her. How could I be a good fit for that writing challenge?

“Well, it’s never too late to start writing properly,” she responded with a warm smile. “Your writing has promise, I see it, and your style is engaging. The deadline is in three weeks. I am sure you will find something to write about.”

“Okay, professor. I will try my best.”

She handed me a brochure stating the rules of the competition, and I headed to a little canteen outside the campus for breakfast.

I sat at my usual spot, by the corner window, overlooking the Manhattan skyline, and fiddled with the glossy paper between my thumbs, thinking.

I had always been enamored by the idea of having written, always in love with the image of the creative writer and the struggles associated with the expression of creativity.

And, now, it was time to taste that dream, I thought to myself.

The rumble of the commuter trains made the building tremble as I took out my notebook and started scribbling down sentences that led nowhere, my pen facing the arduous task of starting from the beginning, over and over again.

To say that my writing was crusty was an understatement.

But I knew what needed to be done.

And the days passed, and I kept at it. I had embarked on a quest to master the written word and to nourish my dormant creativity, so that I could put my thoughts to the world. What thoughts? I didn’t know at that time. The only thing that I was sure of was that I had something to say despite the lack of its presence.

I obsessed with grammar; I mastered the comma; I moved on to the em-dash—I regressed to the fundamentalist attitude of the colons and semi-colons; I weaved clauses with stylistic comma structures that appended conventional grammar rules; I studied story-telling techniques and attempted to emulate other writers. I wrote fiction and non-fiction.

Writing was starting to become part of my DNA.

By the end of the semester, I had finished second at the creative writing challenge in the school’s literature magazine, making both myself and my professor proud, and I kept writing short pieces for my own pleasure.

For my own pleasure? Well, at last, I was transformed. I had become a writer that would not stop writing ever since.

And, all that, thanks to one person, who saw promise where I thought there was none.

Sometimes we need that soft nudge into the unknown, in order to kickstart a catalytic reaction that will irrevocably change us and show us a path once unimaginable.

These things happen with the flow of life, seemingly random, by exposure to new settings and openness to new ideas. It’s all about saying yes at the right moment and then believing to the fruits of your efforts.

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Almost a decade later, I am sitting in my desk, with a pen in hand, writing a short story, and thinking of the professor that started it all.