Your Cliche Writer Origin Story

By: Meghan Donovan

Rejected on 12/1/2020 and 1/11/2021

The first time I met Miss Evelyn Morgan, I wasn’t even in her class. She was the tenth grade English teacher, and I was in ninth grade. She was also the advisor of the Sprag, our high school newspaper. I don’t remember who got me involved with the Sprag. It might have been my guidance counselor, Mrs. Barbara Benczo. She and her husband also went to my parents’ church, so she must have known about my love of writing. It might also have been my ninth grade English teacher, Mrs. Alberta Roberts. She let me create an anti-censorship poster to go with my book report on Fahrenheit 451 and dress as Aphrodite/Venus to talk to the class about my wayward son, Eros/Cupid. 

In any case, I started small, nothing particularly memorable. Miss Morgan was strict with her classes but let us more or less go our own way during our periods in the newspaper office. I listened to sophomores, juniors, and seniors talk a lot. We talked about what happened the year the seniors were born and made lists of what our classmates and teachers wanted for Christmas. 

The first byline I remember having was for my review of the school production of “South Pacific.” Because I couldn’t dance or sing particularly well, I was grateful for the opportunity to display my love of musicals. I knew at the time that “South Pacific” was about racism, sexism, and the horrors of war, but I mostly enjoyed the songs and costumes. Miss Morgan praised my review, and I was proud of myself.

The next year, I was both in her class and on the newspaper staff. For the newspaper, I wrote an article about our earth science teacher and football coach who received a Points of Light award from President George H.W. Bush because he paid the fees of football players whose families couldn’t afford them. 

In class, besides our usual classwork, we entered contests. We entered a Scholastic contest that entailed unique takes on literature; my contributions were a news story about an archeological dig on the site where “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson took place and an additional verse to “Beasts of England, Beasts of Ireland” from Animal Farm. We ended up winning second prize and spent one period doing a photoshoot where we all looked hard at work in the library.

We also entered an art and literary competition about the Holocaust. In hindsight, I wonder if Miss Morgan was personally affected in some way and that explained her passion for the subject. I wrote an essay about a small French town and the pastor of the largest church, who hid Jewish people from the Nazis for years. I won second or third prize for my year and got my first big experience with writing research papers.

Another project wasn’t a contest, but it was multimedia before multimedia was a thing. Miss Morgan tasked us with filming a sequel to one of the short stories we read. My group chose “The Cop and the Anthem” by O. Henry, and we decided to have the protagonist’s guardian angel visit him in jail and take him through his life, including his heartbreak when the girl he loved died suddenly. We wrapped up with a “Prodigal Son” ending where the protagonist’s mother and brother find out he’s in jail and beg the judge to free him. At the end, the guardian angel broke the fourth wall.

The next year, my teacher was Mrs. Nina Lindgren who, upon hearing my persuasive speech about my (at the time) Catholic faith, gently, privately reminded me about the separation of church and state and also suggested I send my essay to Guideposts. I still wrote for Miss Morgan: movie reviews, accounts of our Academic Challenge team, music reviews. I entered another essay in the Holocaust contest but did not win a prize that year. 

My classmates called Miss Morgan “Evil-Lyn” and mocked her friendship with our popular math teacher Mr. Don Wallace. I defended her at the time but now question her taste in colleagues. Mr. Wallace was a misogynistic, racist, and homophobic jerk who regularly insulted his students. 

To this day, when I write, I think of Miss Morgan teaching us how to diagram sentences (which I enjoyed) and am careful not to overuse “very.”