Guest Post: A w-w-w-word in your ear by Keith Austin
February 03, 2015
WORDS have always been a big part of my life. They have
always fascinated me and, looking back, surely helped to form me even when they
were recalcitrant and squirmed and kicked in my mouth, when they refused to be
pinned down, or when they just plain and simple refused to come out and play.
Not all of them, of course, just a few such as the number
‘seven’. I wrote in The Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jan/09/stammering-the-kings-speech)
of the tribulations of being a stutterer and working at a newspaper where the
first digit of the phone number was a word I couldn’t say, but I do wonder now
just how much the stammering shaped who I am today.
The written word has never been a problem. There didn’t seem
to be a time when words didn’t speak to me. It was as if they had just lain
hidden in my head, a fully formed alphabet waiting to get out and cause
mischief and wonder. But while they played nice on the page they were
bully-boys in my mouth.
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t stutter. From before
primary school to, well, now. Though
today it’s more or less gone and, indeed, after the Guardian piece came out
even close friends admitted surprise: “I didn’t know you stuttered!”
I wonder now, though, how much the stuttering shaped both me
and others of my ilk. Certainly, acting was out. A few early appearances in
drama class put paid to that: “W-W-When sssshhall w-w-we three m-m-m-meet
again, in thunder, lightning or in r-r-rain?”
Though it didn’t stop Nicole Kidman, James Earl Jones, Emily Blunt, Nicholas Brendon
(Xander in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series), Bruce
Willis, Sam Neill, or Jimmy
Stewart – erstwhile stammerers all.
That suggestion comes from an online stammerer who has also lists what he calls the predictable personality ingredients of stammerers: a strong streak of perfectionism, sensitivity to criticism, an inordinate need to please people, avoidance, procrastination, passivity, fearfulness.
I’m not convinced; this seems to me to be as scientific as predicting personality based on star signs: “Hi, I’m Keith and I’m a Pisces, I’m sensitive, a dreamer and I love f-f-f-fish.”
My stutter followed me through a reporting career on local
newspapers in the UK before I wormed my way on to a subbing desk. I’ve never
really thought about it before but was this perhaps a way of avoiding speaking?
I had always seen it as simply a career move but perhaps I was still running
away. I could edit, write headlines, design newspaper pages – just play around
with my beloved words, if I’m to be truthful - without ever opening my mouth.
In the ensuing years I learned to deal with the stammer, to
word switch, use my hands as distraction pieces, pepper my speech with pauses
and conversational tics so any stuttering was hidden under layers of artifice.
Ever since I was little I’ve wanted to be a writer, a proper
writer with a proper book on a proper shelf in a proper bookshelf – and I have
the discarded manuscripts to prove it. Finally, though, it happened with the
publication of Grymm in 2012 and Snow, White, in May last year.
And in Snow, White,
at last, I got my own back. The main character, John Creed, is a teenage boy
with a stammer who, because of it, is bullied at school. I knew, quite
literally, how he felt. This time, though, the outcome was different.
The stammer? It’s still there at times. So if I do pop up in
your neck of the woods, please be gentle with me; don’t finish my sentences and
be a little patient – I will get
there in the end.
Of course if all this goes really well then one day I’m going to have to come out and
publicise my s-s-s-sssseventh book. Which is easy for you to say but for me,
well …
Keith Austin is the Sydney-based
author of Grymm, Snow, White (both published by Random House) and Jago, the 3rd in his loose Fractured
Fairytales trilogy (Jago is available at www.keithaustin.org/jago-2 for
$15 plus P&P).
Keith will be
appearing at the Somerset College Celebration of Literature on the Gold Coast
from March 18-20. Visit www.somerset.qld.edu.au/celebration-of-literature for more details.
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