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One Sentence at a Time.

Jessica Watson of Four Plus An Angel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jessica Watson is a mom to five, four in her arms and one in her heart. After the loss of her infant daughter in 2007, Jessica left the corporate world behind, vowed to soak up every living moment and found her writing roots again. You can find her wearing her heart on her sleeve at her personal blog Four Plus an Angel, on facebook or on twitter @jessbwatson.

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I never really thought I was good at anything in high school. Floundering through four years of trying to fit in, I joined in whatever my friends did. I was a clumsy cheerleader, a somber member of the Pep Club and an avid avoider of anything having to do with athletics.

My junior year I was introduced to Literature I & II. I found myself lost in The Crucible and trying to squelch the urge to discuss The Scarlet Letter during outdoor lunch and noisy car rides home. Normally never one to raise my hand, I sat a little taller every time the teacher called on me to read a few pages aloud. The words were mesmerizing, I couldn’t wait to say them one after another.

I loved every A I received in English. Resenting red marks on my carefully typed assignments, I felt confident enough to argue comma placement and prepositional use  until my teacher relented and changed my grade more often than not. College was more of the same, I searched for the purpose of physics and history while counting the minutes until English Composition.

I’ve always appreciated the perfect word choice, an exquisite sentence, a book that places the characters in the seat next to me. It was not until I began blogging that truly owned my love of reading and writing. Who knew there were millions of other sentence-lovers out there?

My interest in writing has grown from a casual thought to a lifeline for survival.

I have written through the good, the bad and the so ugly I’m left drained and empty. There are days that writing consumes my mind, I string words together in the shower, jot down phrases to stop them from buzzing through my mind and miss entire conversations because I am dreaming of something I must put on paper. For some reason it took me 30 years to claim this love. If I could go back to that self-conscious girl in high school, I’d tell her she was good at something, that she needed to give up on what made everyone else happy and join the poetry club or write for the yearbook committee or read the rest of her Lit I book even though it wasn’t the “cool” thing to do. I would tell her to drown herself in books and spend her late nights writing her heart out instead of worrying about what others thought of her.

I would rather curl up with a good book and a glass of wine than head to a concert and I would stand in a long line to meet Ann Lamotte while Halle Berry was standing across the street.

Writing has brought me out of and through the darkest times of my life and I’m not sure my words can ever quite do justice to the journey but I will keep trying, one sentence at a time.

Comments

    • Don’t you wish we all could have found each other many years ago? Would love to have had friends like you and Erin in my teens.

  2. Wow, I feel like you told my life story too. I could relate to everything you wrote, from the damaging self doubt to the late bloom in writing. I’m glad you’ve found your way to writing…it is never too late. I’m looking forward to exploring more of your words in your blog!

  6. Yes, this absolutely. The blogging community has opened up a whole new world for me; and it is a world that saves me, daily. Thank you so much for sharing your writing story here. You are so very good at this. I am so glad to have connected to you and to have the honor of reading your heart.

  7. So beautiful, Jessica. And such a truly wonderful, gifted writer you are.
    P.S. I’d rather stay home and read a book too. 🙂

  8. We would’ve gotten along so well in high school. I used to get to school early and go the library to read. When I was in elementary school, I would ask my dad to drive me to the library. I’d rather have been there than at parties.

  9. Oh yes, I very much so feel the same way. I fell in love with literature and creative writing in the eight grade. I knew then that I would major in English at college, and I did. I only wish I had pursued it upon graduating. But you get married and you have babies and writing well I never found a way to make it pay the bills. But one day, maybe I will craft that beautiful sentence that will make it.

  11. I feel the same way, for very similar reasons.

    The pain of things in life became too much to keep down inside.

    Words heal. They help me understand. They give me a place to go with what my soul wants out.

    xo

  13. Wow, this line really struck me, “My interest in writing has grown from a casual thought to a lifeline for survival.”
    I adore your writing, my friend. xo

  14. I feel this way too. Blogging let me shine in an area that was deeply buried. And just recently when I went through something painful, it didn’t feel like I could fully heal until I had expressed it through writing.

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