Novelist says her dyslexia drove her to succeed at writing

From Scott Barr at the Cleveland Literature Examiner:

“The publishing industry has been hurting for a while now,” best-selling author Sarah Willis (pictured) says, stirring her coffee contemplatively. “It’s not something that can be blamed totally on the economy either, signs of stagnation were obvious...the changes brought about by modern technology, the changing tastes of readers, it all just began adding up. The world just wasn’t the same beneath their feet any more. They have to figure out where they stand and where they want to be in the future.

“Their immediate reaction has been to draw in their resources, to tighten up as far as money for publicity goes. There are the books you see face-out when you walk into a bookstore, then there’s the rest of us. They think that’s the answer. Meanwhile, they keep issuing hardbacks, then waiting a year or so to release the title in trade paperback – so people wait for the paperback, especially since the economy went haywire.”

Sarah has been a fixture of the Northeast Ohio and national literary scene since her first novel Some Things That Stay, (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000) was listed as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction, and was awarded the Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature. Some Things That Stay was made into a movie and released in 2004. Meanwhile, she published three more novels, The Rehearsal, A Good Distance, and The Sound of Us. Her most recent effort, a novella entitled, Double Exposure, can be found online at usatoday.com/open books (Although someone else’s picture is on the page). The reading public is awaiting her fifth novel, a work currently in progress.

In between bouts of writing Sarah busies herself with readings and speaking to groups about the writing life. She also teaches creative writing at conference workshops at The Writer’s Center at Chautauqua and the Maui Writer’s Retreat and at colleges, including Hiram College, John Carroll University.

“I don’t think you can really teach someone to write,” Sarah says, leaning over her coffee and tapping her index finger in emphasis, “But if a person comes to one of my classes who wants to write and is willing to put out the necessary effort, I can make them a better writer…kind of like a coach.”

Determination and the necessary effort are something Sarah is familiar with in her own writing career. She has dyslexia, which would seem a rather formidable roadblock to becoming a writer, but her literary output speaks for itself. Then Sarah speaks out for herself and dyslexics everywhere:

“I don’t want to be know as ‘the dyslexic writer’” she says, “I think of myself as a writer first – a writer with dyslexia.”

That would all be fine, except dyslexia seems to not only have affected Sarah’s writing style, but seems to have been one of the driving reasons behind her becoming a writer in the first place.

“I began writing to make me feel better about myself, to make me feel like I wasn’t dumb like everyone was telling me I was. I wrote poetry and kept it up even after I quit school at sixteen. It was a big thing back then, but I’ve been writing for so long now I’ve learned to compensate.

“It just takes me a lot longer to write something. It’s when I’m moving that things get all mixed around, like if I’m writing I’ll start reversing letters. I have to sit very still when I write, and I hen-peck, using my index fingers only. Some words, mostly ones with a lot of vowels – words like bureau – throw me for a loop.

“I think having this learning disorder has actually made me a better writer. I learned a few tricks early on, such as using words without too many letters, and keeping my sentences short, tight, to the point and clear.”

Good advice for any aspiring writer, and one of the elements that give Sarah’s prose the tight and surging feel without sacrificing the underlying tenderness that often dominates her stories.

“I also can’t sit down with a rough draft and read from it while I’m type because I have to focus on the page in front of me and staying still. I write my rough drafts out in long-hand, read them over, put them away and start the second draft from memory. It’s something I have to teach aspiring writers in my classes, to throw out what isn’t working; that our words are not golden…there’s no perfect draft. Most writing teachers will encourage their students to cut and re-write until around 50 percent of their manuscript is changed. With the method I have to use my drafts end up being about 80 percent changed. It may like a lot of trouble, but it’s just something I’ve gotten used to. I couldn’t imagine not being a writer.”

“One of the greatest benefits of being a writer is meeting, knowing other writers, and having them for friends. There is so much talent in Cleveland, just in my small suburban area of Cleveland Heights there is Paula McLain, who wrote a memoir a few years ago and just turned out her first novel, A Ticket to Ride, Thrity Umrigar, an Indian woman who has written several novels, her latest one is The Weight of Heaven, Loung Ung, a Cambodian refugee who’s written two non-fiction books, They Killed My Father First, and After They Killed My Father. She is also an educator and activist in the field of human rights. She says she wants to try her hand at fiction – if it’s as good as her work so far… I can’t forget Kristy Olsen, she was the ghost writer behind the best-seller The Kabul Beauty School, and George Bilgere, a poet who’s won a Pushcart Prize, an amazing amount of talent in one small suburb; and I have the honor of calling them all my friends, which most probably wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t have persisted in my work and become a writer.”