What clicked and made you have a different mindset? How long did it take to start changing and how long was the transformation? Did it last or is it an ongoing back and forth between your old self? I want to know your transformation and success.
Any kind of change, big or small. Anything from weight loss, world view, personality shift, major life change, single change like stopped smoking or drinking soda to starting exercising or going back to school. I want to hear how people’s life were a bit or a lot better through reading and your progress.
TIA 🙏
Two books that I read in high school definitely changed my life: first was Big Sur by Jack Kerouac. There are intentionally misspelled words, almost no punctuation and very little traditional structure to his writing (it’s about him having DTs in a cabin on the coast in northern California). I was literally not aware that you could write books and not follow the grammatical rules they teach you in school, I remember showing it to my friends like “Look at this?! Can you believe it?!”
The second book was Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, which also has a non traditional structure, is full of potty humor (and I’m not trying to be polite, it’s the best way I can put it), is filled with doodles and is just fucking bizarre while also being very readable and funny.
Kids need to learn the rules of how to write, but they also need to be taught that rules are meant to be broken sometimes.
e. e. cummings did this for me with poetry. True masters of their craft know exactly the right ways to break the rules.