How Dyslexia Made Me a Writer.
This is arguably the most personal story I ever write, period!
How the most terrible writer that I know (me) managed to become not so terrible.
If you already have at least a basic understanding of what Dyslexia is or even heard of such neuro-divergent disabilities, congratulations, you are already ahead of me in this subject. Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that primarily affects the skills involved in accurate and fluent word reading and spelling. According to the British Dyslexia Association, it is a common neurodivergent disability that at minimum 10% of the world population carries. So, the chances of you knowing at least one dyslexic person are very high. However, not so surprisingly, I did not even know the term until a few months ago when I got diagnosed with it.
The moment I received the diagnosis, I laughed. It clicked years and years of surreal emotions I had in a fraction of a second. Suddenly, it made sense. If you were following my blogs, you may already know that I was born and raised in Sri Lanka. An exceptionally beautiful country that accepts progressive developments at a snail’s pace. Even the largest, most internationally present tech companies do not acknowledge ideas such as neurodiversity. I went to one of the top-tier public schools in the country, and was fortunate enough to learn from amazing teachers who changed my life! But still, none of them even knew what dyslexia is. The struggle my favourite English teachers went through to help me spell is much greater than the effort my least favourite teachers put to bully me for bad spellings. One thing I loved doing at school was public speaking. One thing I would avoid at all costs was public reading!
One of the most traumatic experiences happened when I was 14 at school. A few trainers who used to train us on public media asked us to write a news report as a practice. They wanted it handwritten. I spent hours on it. They too spent almost an hour in a meeting reading it out loud in front of everyone pronouncing the words I spelt wrong phonetically. Luckey for me, it did not scar me. After all, English was my second language. I moved on. Neither they nor I knew any better.
Some of my favourite teachers used all kinds of creative approaches to make my writing better, but none of them were trained, nor were they researched to know that it is something I could not control. All these kept me away from writing for a better part of my life. Until I decided to stop doing that.
Eventually, as I started my career, I could not avoid writing anymore. While I still had no clue about dyslexia, I knew abstinence is not an option anymore. The stakes were too high. I was a professional working in a country that had no clue about neurodivergent disabilities. Therefore, it was a matter of not looking incompetent. I could not afford to humiliate myself professionally.
The solution for that was to humiliate myself publically!
Little did I know, this decision I made then took me on a path to becoming a professional writing content for social media campaigns, websites, and magazines. End up producing one of the top 100 essays for the Leaders of Tomorrow global essay competition in Switzerland 2023.
I don’t have many success stories to share about my life. As I share in many of my blogs, I am someone just like many who is going through the struggle together and prefer to share snippets of my journey over success stories. However, this is one of those rare, mini-success stories. This is an attempt to share my journey. Of course, there is much more to learn. I am sure I still have only scratched the surface. However, I have made a much better version of myself and I think that is worth sharing. This is what I did.
I started writing
I had two main motives to do this. First, I had ideas bubbling in my head that needed a platform. But most importantly I needed a safe space where I could practice my writing. One might wonder if a public blog is the most ideal place to practice. All I knew was, none of my blogs are going to go viral, which means they will mostly be read by the people I share it with. I knew none of them would come back to me and say “Dude that was horrible”. They would think that, but would never say it to my face! On top of that, since it goes public, I also had this extra pressure to proofread and minimize mistakes as much as possible.
As I published my first few, I started actively reaching out to people and asking for feedback. By this time in my life, I had enough supportive friends who were genuinely there to help me without making me feel horrible. Their comments and suggestions helped me build a foundation that I could work on. Surrounding myself with the right kind of supportive people helped me to get past the initial stage which I was most likely to give up.
It took time to learn the basics.
Because I and all my English teachers were busy teaching me how to spell correctly, learning the basics of writing was not a priority. Therefore I had to follow some non-conventional methods on learn. Most of my sentence structures are inspired by the fiction novels I read and movies I watched. This means I value the ease and immersive experience of reading over advanced theoretical principles of writing. It might not be the best idea but it gets the job done for me.
Unproportionally large amount of practice.
Once I got a simple foundation and an interest to write, the next big thing was consistency. How to make sure that I practice enough to improve? That was the next big challenge for me. Because we all know that ambition without consistency is short-lived.
Finally, I got a reasonable task at hand to practice what I learnt from James Clear’s Atomic Habits. I set up a calendar and made it a point to publish a blog every week. Saturday was my last day to publish. I get really mad and disappointed in myself if I don’t hit that deadline. After a few months, a local company reached out to me with a jackpot deal. They were willing to pay a small sum for each article I submit. This financial incentive made me write every day for a year!
Eventually, my blogs started getting thousands of views. Started receiving offers to write content for websites. I wrote my way into gaining a scholarship at the University of Bristol and won global competitions. My younger version would point-blank refuse to acknowledge the fact that I embraced writing as one of my key attributes.
What does Dyslexia have to do with it?
Nothing! That is my point. Luckey or unlucky for me, I went through all that and made one of my worst weaknesses into a key strength even though it was my dyslexia that kept me at bay. Thanks to my university disabilities team and the social movement; Made By Dyslexia, even after the diagnosis, I never felt it as a disability.
If fact, I don’t get to make it an excuse when Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Richard Branson, Winston Churchill, and many more were dyslexic. Maybe my divergent way of processing information made me a better writer and spell-check tools help me to hide my weaker sides. I am sure William Shakespeare and Agatha Christie who were also dyslexic did not have Grammarly to correct their spellings!
If you are Dyslexic
If you think you are dyslexic, the first and the most important suggestion I could give you is to go through a formal diagnosis. Once you are certain, everything will start to make sense. There are many ways to get yourself tested depending on where you live.
If you are dyslexic, first make sure you reach out to get the support you get to avoid your weaknesses. Above that, make sure to understand and polish up the gifts you get with it! Spread the word and let others know what you can bring to the table! If you need to learn more about it, visit https://www.madebydyslexia.org/ — A global charity focused on empowering dyslexic individuals.
Dyslexic thinking is a skill listed in LinkedIn skills, it is a gift. Please DO NOT try to hide it!
P.S. — Watch this as a start!
