The Gift of Dyslexia Room

 So there are logical steps: the baby sits up; then crawls; then toddles; then walks; then runs.  They are logical steps in a straight line and a lot of people spend their whole lives thinking in a straight line.

Dyslexic brains are the butterfly flying here there and everywhere, picking up interesting bits of information, making unusual connections.

By the way, dyslexic babies often don’t learn to walk in logical steps.

Apparently crawling is often missed out. I went straight from sitting still to running. I also didn’t do baby talk. I was completely silent then opened my mouth and said a sentence. My first word was Bob who was my bear on wheels!

The difficulties come when we must land our brain that is flying around the room and do everyday things in logical steps.

This is where the confidence issues arise because it appears to the people who are in the straight line that we are slow. In actual fact, It’s because we need to slow our brains down sometimes to do certain tasks. I am told that picture thinkers think 500 times quicker than non-picture thinkers. 

When I say to the young people that I mentor, who often come into the room literally fizzing and buzzing with energy and ideas but sometimes distraught because everyday life is proving so challenging. 

              ‘Come on, relax, breath,’ I say, ‘and let’s slow your brain down so that you can concentrate.’ They smile at me and I see it makes such a difference to their self-esteem learning that they are too fast not too slow. I love to hear all their ideas and original perceptions on things. Because it’s true being dyslexic is a wonderful thing! 

So, to all you dyslexics out there I say, BELIEVE IN YOURSELVES. 

I really am not making light of the difficulties of dyslexia. There are days when I just despair when I get locked out of my bank account because I’ve spelt my password wrong, or I can’t pay for my shopping because I’ve put my pin number in backwards! The last man I spoke to at the bank, told me he had a brother with dyslexia and understood and was so kind. I had got my password wrong three times and he said very gently ‘Have you written it down anywhere?’

I replied ‘Yes but I can’t remember where……’

And that to be honest is quite typical, as my friends will tell you 

with utter despair, I am always losing things! That of course is because my brain is always flying ahead, and I don’t actually register where I am putting things.

Dyslexics have brilliant long-term memories, which is why so many dyslexics tell me is the reason they bear a grudge. It’s true! Adult dyslexics remember conversations we had when we were kids like it was yesterday, but we can’t remember an instruction we have just been given!

When I was a child my school dinners were not nice. In, I will go as far to say, they were disgusting!

We were not allowed to go out and play until we had eaten it all up!

Despite my efforts of trying to hide all my food in the cold lumpy mash potato and then squash it under my knife and fork, I was still made to sit there and sit there…. I caught myself as a grown woman quickly crossing the road to avoid an old woman who was walking towards me. I realized that she was the dinner lady who had tried to make me eat my school dinners all those years ago! A probably very sweet little old lady but to me she was still that dinner lady who tried to make me eat my cold lumpy mash potato!

You see what I did there, I flew off at a tangent! But truthfully, this really helps me with my writing, as I can remember clearly what it’s like being nine.

If dyslexics can get things into our brilliant long-term memory, rather than our not so good forgetting password, instructions and pin numbers short-term memory, then we are away! 

If you have explored Jane’s Room, you will have read briefly about my childhood and how my dyslexia was not spotted at school.

Here is journalist Natasha Harding’s article in The Sun about how I came to be tested for Dyslexia.

If you had told me when I was a child that I would grow up and become an author I would have blatantly laughed at you!

I will never forget the day that I first met my editor Naomi Greenwood at Hodder Children’s Books. It changed my life.

She asked about my childhood and said, ‘You haven’t realized but all your life you have been on a path to this minute.’

It’s true I had been. Although it never entered my head to be a Children’s Author, I have always loved Children’s Books. I have asthma and when I was sick as a child, I would curl up under the quilt and read When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr and the My Friend Flicka series by Mary O’ Hara were among my firm favourites. As an adult I loved to read children’s books as well.

Also, dyslexics are day dreamers and at school when I couldn’t understand what was going on in the classroom, I would conjure up stories in my head. 

I thought you might find it interesting to know a bit about how my Editor, Naomi, and I work together on my books. We have face to face meeting whenever possible. It really helps as I process by lipreading sounds as well as hearing them. Also, to discuss edits really helps me rather than receiving a long email with lots of instructions! 

This is a photograph of one of our meeting on the roof terrace at Hachette.

Naomi and I also like to work in a multisensory way. So we had one of our meetings at Lauderdale House where Restoration Actress Nell Gwyn lived, and part of my book Will You Catch Me? is set.

When Naomi went on maternity leave, she left me in the brilliant hands of Emma Roberts to edit Swimming to the Moon, who also worked with me in a multisensory way. 

Bee in Swimming to the Moon loves hats, so we went down to the National Theatre Costume Department and spent the afternoon trying on hats so that I could explore how it made me feel. For example; when I had a top hat or a bowler or a boater on my head, the touch of the texture, the smell of the fabric, what it did to my posture. Here are some photos from the costume warehouse.

Incidentally so many dyslexic children, teenagers and also reluctant readers have said that Swimming to the Moon is the first book they have been able to read right the way from beginning to end. They have all said that they love the font. Emma and I picked the font at the time because we liked the look of it but because of this feedback Naomi and I have now used this font for Will You Catch Me? and Moon Dog.

All dyslexics are of course different from each other and coloured overlays don’t help everyone, but it is worth trying them. 

It helps me to use a lime green colour overlay. This I use when I am reading in public with my ordinary glasses.

When reading by myself I use my purple dyslexia glasses. The colour that helps you can change as well as your eyes change. Many dyslexics find the contrast of black print on white paper too much, so using off white or yellow paper can help. 

Naomi, my editor, always colour codes my notes. When we are at the final stages of the creative process and the proof pages are printed out, we mark each chapter with a different colour.

Sometimes I get asked to do interesting things because of my dyslexia. Here is a book The Bigger Picture Book of Amazing Dyslexics And The Jobs They DO by Kate Power and Kathy Iwanczak Forsyth. I felt so privileged to be asked to endorse this very special book. 

I am asked to speak on panels. Theses photographs were taken at the Morecambe and Vice Festival with fellow dyslexic authors Fleur Hitchcock and Jennie Finch. We were asked to talk about our writing process. The panel was chaired by Ashley Dyer.

The Nurodivergent  Celebration week was started by Siena Castellon who is 17 years old.

Click on the video to see an extract that was shown on ITV news from the Moat School where I worked for many years.

The Song I Believe In Me was written and conducted in the clip by Matthew Potger.

I have known for a long time that dyslexia is a gift. The pupils at the Moat School where I worked for many years, have some of the most extraordinary unique individual ways of thinking that I have ever come across.

The young people at the Moat are really supported but as I wasn’t diagnosed until I was an adult, so my childhood was very challenging.

I saw a television programme on Young Offenders and Dyslexia filmed at Polmont Young Offenders Institution. Leading dyslexia experts, Jane Kirk and Gavin Reid, tested the Young Offenders for dyslexia and boy after boy was diagnosed with dyslexia. Time and time again it was the same story - labelled stupid at school, which lead to self esteem issues, leading to bad behaviour, leading to crime, leading to prison.

It broke my heart. I felt such an affinity with the Young Offenders because I too was labelled stupid at school.

The next week the television programme was on dyslexic geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci, Einstein and Guy Ritchie the film director among others.

A couple of years later I started having a recurring dream that I had to write a play and it had to be called Leonardo Stole My Crayon. 

I knew my play had to be about the genius and the criminal element of dyslexia and was to be set in an art class in a young offenders institution. 

I telephoned HMS Polmont where the tv programme had been filmed. To cut a long story short, I was Invited up to meet some of the young offenders and run a workshop with them. 

Boredom is a killer in prison and humour the survival tool.  As you can imagine, my improvisation workshops were a pretty memorable experience!

Visiting the young offenders was life changing and I felt truly humbled by the experience. I came home to the beautiful Moat School and directed a production called SHHHH Mr Churchill’s Talking – an evening of scenes and monologues about children in the Second World War. Playwright and Director Stephen Polliakoff saw my production and wrote a glowing testament to the Arts Council as part of my application for a grant to write Leonardo Stole My Crayon. 

My application was successful and I was all set to write my play about young offenders and dyslexia.

The contrast between the beautiful Moat School where the children get support and the lives of the many young offenders with dyslexia struck home. I knew how important this project was.

I spent a year writing Leonardo Stole My Crayon and during that time revisited Polmont Young Offenders Institution to do more workshops. 

Theatre Director, Janette Smith, was my mentor and directed a rehearsed reading of my play at the Royal Court with actors Lennie James and Lindsey Coulson. Actor Joseph Fiennes was patron of the project. 

The reading got very positive feedback. I carried on working on Leonardo Stole My Crayon and several drafts later:

If you are a teacher and want me to do my ‘Gift of Dyslexia’ as part of my Author Visit, please press here to go to my Events Room for further details.

If you are dyslexic and reading this, then I know that you are unique and have a gift as well.