I’m no expert on dyslexia – I need the internet’s help to spell it correctly – but I’m told the distance between sounds and letters is bridged with a gazillion neurosensory connections, so it is no surprise the system can go wrong. My particular dyslexia is of the auditory sort: I often don’t know where to stress syllables and I constantly mispronounce people’s names.
Reading is unaffected but spelling depends a lot on interpreting word sounds so my spelling is terrible. I wasn’t diagnosed as a child although I displayed classic dyslexic misspelling traits: letter transposition for example. I seemed locked into spelling ‘Poet’ as ‘Peot’, and in the Irish education system I grew up with one must write poet, poem and poetry often. I outsmarted that one eventually by remembering Edgar Allen Poe. That’s just one strategy I developed to work around dyslexia. I have many more.
By my twenties it was clear there were many words, with as little as five letters, that I just couldn’t spell even though I wrote them often. I was able to conduct many five-step processes; I could make a loaf of bread without a recipe, so why couldn’t I recall the correct order of five letters in a word? Through reading about dyslexia and talking to others with the issue I diagnosed myself. When one friend told me she had cultivated bad handwriting to disguise her bad spelling, I experienced a sharp shock of recognition. I was doing that too. Another strategy, adopted almost subconsciously.
I knew there was no cure so didn’t seek professional input, I simply got on with things, working around the problem while writing my first books; a trilogy of Young Adult stories. First and second drafts were by hand. I’d just not worry about spelling or turn to a printed dictionary if something really bugged me. Later, I’d switch to the computer to avail of spellcheck. Sometimes my attempt at a word is so far off that spellcheck can’t help; with my first go at ‘dyslexia’ I was offered ‘dixies’. I find the spellcheck packed with Google’s search engine has better reach. Sure enough, for this article, the same misspelling brought me the correct suggestion. If my misspelling is still too extreme for Google to make the right suggestion, then I add supplementary words to the search and that helps.
In my early thirties I enrolled with the School of Geography in Queens University Belfast, learning to make maps and writing my fourth book, a non-fiction portrait of Ireland’s border. I noticed that a dyslexia test was one of the disability supports offered by the university. I told people I did it because it was free, but I think it was more that I was ready for it. I was by then confident enough in my life direction that no diagnosis would shake me. I still sometimes wonder what would’ve happened if I had been diagnosed as a child: I might have decided writing wasn’t for me and had a totally different life.
The test took two hours and involved arranging coloured blocks as well as writing exercises. Finally, the doctor asked me to write out a page of dictation that he wanted to take away to analyse. It was about three hundred words and handing the page over to him felt very raw; this was something I had avoided all my life. I always contrived ways to avoid giving away something I had written by hand (and without a dictionary). Such notes were for my eyes only. I was surprised by how emotional and exposing the moment was, I almost wept.
Now I see getting the test was an important step and one I should have taken sooner.
Having an official diagnosis helped me take ownership of my dyslexia. I hadn’t entirely realised that some shame had been hanging about the limitation, but from then I spoke about it more openly. It’s why my advice to anyone who thinks they might have dyslexia is to get tested but, at the same time, don’t let the result define you or decide your direction. You won’t need to give anything up, but you will need strategies, and extra patience. You can even write a novel with dyslexia. It just takes longer. There might be positives to the extra time. By simply slowing me down, dyslexia has made me more careful, and maybe this is not a bad thing.
I wonder, too, if it has shaped my craft in other ways. Perhaps my interest in language as spoken could be related to dyslexia. With my fifth book, a novel called The Boy from the Sea, I wanted the reader to experience the intensity of being told a story verbally, while the teller looks them in the eye. To keep focus on the spoken word The Boy from the Sea contains no references to literature; no books, and certainly no weighty classics. I wanted The Boy from the Sea to sound like it is narrated by someone whose way with words was gained through barroom debates, a fondness for television documentaries and an appreciation of witty conversation.
In this way, I wonder if my dyslexia helped foster original work. I think it is true what they claim: adversity, not freedom, leads to invention. Still, the book was published by Picador in the UK and Ireland – no problems there – but in the USA will be published by Knopf. I live in fear of having to say that name aloud during our online meetings. I always trip over it, despite my wife’s coaching.
It is tempting to close by looking on the bright side, saying my dyslexia has helped shape me and I wouldn’t do without it. But no, dyslexia is annoying. Life is short and it steals my time, but I don’t hate it. It is like a persistent ache, or a noisy neighbour. I acknowledge it grimly, and then get on with things. It’s my foe – and my companion.
The Boy From The Sea by Garrett Carr is out now
