My father was an atheist, my mother an insomniac, and I’m dyslexic. I stay up all night wondering if there really is a Dog…

[ssgchester]

I’m more open about being a dyslexic.

It is who I am.

I know I’ll never be an honors student. And I’m fine with that. But I did hang in there and received a university degree.

In History too.

Tons of reading. Tons of papers to write.

For you in the UK, is that “tones” for you?

AND WHILE WE ARE ON THE SUBJECT OF THOSE IN THE UK……

I use to a lot of Arthur C. Clark books. Loved his work.

Thing is, on such things as “colour” over here we spell it “COLOR”…..

Did I EVER take hits on my papers. The only one who didn’t nail me on that was …get this,

My UK History professor…….

And I must say, thank God for Spell Check and Grammar Check…

If only this tech was around when I was in college.

And the things they have come up with since I was a child to help people now. Amazing.

Maybe I should write a science fiction story about how dyslexics save the world….hummm

[FlemmingAst]

Well done.

[UaLiathain]

Maybe you should. It's believed Jules Verne was Dyslexic. I'm a dyslexic science fiction writer myself.

I recently gave a writer's panel called "Writing with Dyslexia: An Unfair Advantage?" While dyslexics won't win any spelling bees we do have a few advantages:

1. We think in pictures--3-D techno-color moving pictures.

2. We are natural born story tellers because we don't think in facts, names and dates. We think in metaphors and stories!

3. We see interconnections better than left brained thinkers.

4. We think non-sequentially so we can fill in the blanks when data is missing, thus predicting the possible outcome (Jules Verne was a master at that.)

By the way, I'm from Eastern Washington State. (Hope you aren't too disappointed.) I think it's great that Health Unlocked isn't too snobby to allow Yanks onboard.

[Yasmin74 in reply to UaLiathain]

Ha! ha! and you know the one word we all can spell correctly it's dyslexia

[Yasmin74]

Hi ssgchester

Ha! ha! you made me laugh with your blog, all true comments though.

Yasmin

[friendlylion]

I very much agree with UaLiathain in that if you are interested in writing, dyslexia may not be barrier.

I know a number of writers on the spectrum (although hadn't heard about Jules Vernes).

But of course, as with all neurodiversity, 'Once you've met one dyslexic... you've met one dyslexic.' So having dyslexia isn't necessarily an indication that someone can be a successful writer any more than an indication that they most certainly will not. But some, including a writing teacher I had about 10 years ago who disclosed his dyslexia, suggest that for some, they get a buzz from being determined to 'beat' the challenge with words and really get into them.

Whilst I might broadly agree with UaLathian's 'unfair advantage' theory, for the record, I consider myself a pretty good speller of words I know - I think long-term memory helps, even if I have to write 'receive' and 'recieve' to see which is 'correct'. When typing I make a lot of mistakes but I don't think that is spelling as such. There are now some pretty good 'speech recognition' computer packages which can make things easier for some.

But I'm hopeless at filling in blanks.

Keep on writing!

Graeme