I graduated high school with a 1.8 GPA. I hated school—everything about it. Reading and writing were the last things on my mind. I don’t think I even read a whole book until I was 18 years old. I just wanted to get school over with, graduate, and never have to read another book ever again.
When I was a senior, my church participated in a competition with all kinds of different categories, like music, speech, drama, and writing. I’m competitive, so I looked through the list of categories to find a few to compete in. For some reason, my eyes locked in on the “Short Essay” category. I had failed English twice, so I can’t explain what caused me to believe I could compete in a writing competition, but I was pretty arrogant back then. I wrote 500 words about some topic I can’t even remember now, and submitted my essay without telling anyone about it.
A few weeks later, I was notified my essay had won at the state level and would represent our region in the national competition. I didn’t tell anyone except my parents. Maybe I was embarrassed, I don’t know. That summer, my friends and I were sitting at the national awards ceremony, and no one was really paying attention, because we were waiting for the music categories. All of a sudden, we heard my name: “Winner of Short Essay … Jason Isaacs.” Everyone sitting around me looked at me, confused. “Is there another Jason Isaacs here?” “Did they just say your name?” I got up from my seat, walked onto the stage, received my trophy, and came back to my seat to everyone staring at me, dumbfounded—except my mom, who looked really proud. It was fun to win, but I didn’t really think much about it after that, and I definitely didn’t think of myself as a writer.
A few months later, my youth pastor handed me a book he thought I would be interested in. It was thick and dense, and considering I had never finished a book before, I can’t believe I actually read it, but I did. And as I read, I noticed things. I noticed how the words flowed, and how good sentences had a rhythm. I noticed that certain words seemed to fit in certain places. I noticed how chapters started and ended. I noticed how it was written. I couldn’t have explained that to you then, of course; I just assumed that was how everyone read books, but over the years I’ve realized that’s not true. What was happening to me was the beginning of a lifelong fascination with books. Not just the stories, but the craft, too.
That was 25 years ago, and now I spend my days writing full time. My high school English teachers would never believe it if you told them.
