Two Reasons To Smile(Tom Di Roma) Two Reasons To Smile
Very early in my writing career, I joined a writing group, which turned out to be made up of two factions. One side was a collection of authors who wrote only long stuff like novels or non-fiction. The other side was made up of scribes who wrote only short stories.
Now, if you weren’t familiar with the whole milieu of writing, you might think this was no problem, but it was, in a humorous sort of way. At least to me it seemed funny. Whenever one side or the other would read aloud whatever they had written, the people who wrote books would tell the others who wrote short stories that their stuff seemed too short. And the people who wrote only short stories would tell the other side that their stuff sounded too long. Hearing their comments, I laughed inwardly, because I had no prejudice against either. I figured as long as what they read sounded okay to me then it was fine.
I learned a lesson from that experience. If you’re going to join a writing group, it probably would be best if everyone else’s prose was similar in content and/or length to whatever you were writing, especially if you were working in a particular genre—like in my case. I liked stories that had something weird about them: science fiction, fantasy and/or horror, though it was okay with me if no one else was doing the same type of stories.
Another lesson I learned from that period in my writing career was that I was not a person to write in journals. I did try it a couple of times, but never seemed to get past the first week or two—though I did something else that could be considered close to writing in a journal. I would write down my observations in a spiral notebook, but only when I’d take one day trips into New York City from my home in Connecticut, or when I’d go somewhere on vacation. Mostly, these were just descriptions of what I saw, or what I was doing, or who I met. No deep philosophical musings or anything like that. Though on one trip into New York City, I did experience one of my more pleasurable moments as a writer.
It was back in the very early 1970s. I had taken a day off from work and gone into New York City where I planned to pick up some reading material from a store called The Science Fiction Shop. Afterwards, I took a stroll through the city while writing down my observations.
By early afternoon, I had found myself meandering through Central Park. When I reached a section where there was a small pond, I took off my backpack and sat down, leaning against a tree. Once I got comfortable, I took out my little notebook and pen and started writing down what I was seeing around me.
Suddenly, a group of school kids, probably first and second graders, arrived at the pond, which was filled with ducks and geese. The kids were accompanied by two grownups, one of whom began to lecture them about water fowl. While I sat there and watched, I noticed one young girl towards the end of the group spot me sitting with my pen and pad in hand. She began to drift my way. When she got close to where I was sitting, she asked, “Are you a writer?” I told her I was. And then she asked, “Would you write something for me?”
A moment of panic set in. I mean, what the heck was I supposed to write for this little girl? I thought and thought about it, then came up with an idea. First, I asked what her name was. She told me Emily. So, putting pen to paper, I came up with this:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Sugar is sweet,
And so are you, Emily.
Then, I tore out the page from my notebook and handed it to her. Boy, you should have seen the look on her face! You would have thought I had given her a McDonald’s happy meal. She took the sheet and began waving it in the air while running back toward her classmates and exclaiming, “See what he wrote for me! See what he wrote for me!”
Being that it was so early in my career, I got hugely embarrassed. I can’t tell you exactly why, but I could feel my face turning a deep red. So, very quickly, I packed up my notebook and pen, stood up, slipped on my backpack, and then began to walk away, but not before catching one more glimpse of Emily’s smile. Talk about making someone happy with your writing! To this day, decades later, I still find myself grinning a little every time I think back to that moment.

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