Adventures in Dyslexia, a guest post by Taylor Tyng

I am the righter… er… writer… er… author of CLARA POOLE AND THE WRONG WAY UP, the second book in the CLARA POOLE adventure series. I am also dyslexic.

Writing with dyslexia feels like the world’s worst joke, and other times, a death knell. Those without dyslexia have trouble understanding how a simple task like writing a cohesive sentence is not only tricky but fraught with errors that go unnoticed. As in the following:

“I think were in the seam page. We can’t talk tomorrow if you want.”

“It will be fun to we get the change that to connect tomorrow.”

I wrote these sentences. I write sentences like these all the time. It’s not because I’m dumb. I’m not. I went to good schools. I owned and operated a successful business for nearly 20 years. I can tie my shoes. And, while dyslexia is nowhere near life-threatening, it is life-altering. It can have the effect of being trapped inside an otherwise ordinary mind. As a child, I remember being terrified in school, fearing my teacher might call on me to read aloud or recite multiplication tables. It felt lousy. I felt stupid. Some took my slowness in completing lessons and tests as an unwillingness to do the work. No one knew any better. I became an expert at fading into the background. 

The words of, on, if, in, is, do, to, and so are interchangeable in my world. I see most two-letter words the same and substitute them freely without any notice whatsoever. I also remove them from sentences as if they were unnecessary filler. But my pièce de résistance is when I read or write “can” when I mean “can’t” or “do” when I mean “don’t.” That always leads to interesting results, most obviously, the opposite. That’s not exactly a good outcome for a writer.

Beyond writing and reading, numbers are another special foe, albeit more dyscalculia than dyslexia. I fail spectacularly with word or sequential problems and hit a cement wall with any math concept higher than beginning algebra — as in the beginning of beginning algebra. And, as much as I try, I’m sad to say the symbols for greater than and less than regularly elude me in the moment (or always). Oddly, I am stellar with geometry, estimation, and measurements. I think it’s because I’ve learned to feel and see numbers more than know them. Those situations are also more applied, at least to me. It’s no wonder I began my career as a graphic designer. Numbers were little more than cool shapes.

Still, my experience with dyslexia is far more than being oblivious when I misspell something, or use almost the write word (see what I did there?), or that I jumble the order of sentences. It’s how I think. I literally construct thoughts in reverse, which often results in me playing the role of the involuntary contrarian in most conversations.

Here are some interesting facts from website of the Yale Center For Dyslexia & Creativity:

1) Dyslexia affects 20 percent of the population and represents 80–90 percent of all those with learning disabilities. It is the most common of all neurocognitive disorders.

2) Some of the brightest children struggle to read. Dyslexia occurs at all levels of intelligence—average, above average and highly gifted.

3) Many gifted people at the top of their fields are dyslexic. While people with dyslexia are slow readers, they often are very fast and creative thinkers.

4) At its core, dyslexia is a problem accessing the sound of spoken language. It is not a visual disorder. Early screening, early diagnosis, early evidence-based reading intervention and appropriate accommodations are what is needed to help dyslexic individuals. 

So why write any of this? In my experience, dyslexia still has a quiet shame to it, where those afflicted live in a perpetual and silent embarrassment of sorts while hiding from the world of words. I’ve seen this manifest later in life when people choose professions, specifically those they discount themselves from trying. For me, this was the idea of becoming an author. I didn’t allow myself to try until I was forty-five years old. Now? I can’t imagine being anything else than a writer.

I want young people with dyslexia to express themselves without worrying about the words. It’s not spelling that makes you intelligent—it’s your ideas. Don’t hide behind your challenge. Don’t feel ashamed. Know that you are one of millions who see the world differently. That difference in perspective can be a huge asset to you and everyone around you.

So, think less about writing and more about developing a love of storytelling. Foster a love of words. Describe things in your head, out loud, in song—however best for you. The writing part will come after, simply because it will. I promise, you will find a way. And besides, that’s why there are people called editors. So, get lost in imagination. Explore your emotions. Find inspiration or a point of view, and express them in stories however you can. I know you will find many eager readers waiting to read and listen.

I am dyslexic. I am also a righter. Well, you get the point, and that’s what matters.

Note

To any young person, parent, librarian, or educator reading this, I am always happy to share my experiences with dyslexia in more detail as well as introduce you to other active authors with their own learning differences. Please reach out to me at info@taylortyng.com.

My dyslexic toolbox

There are a few tools that I could not live without that aid me in managing dyslexia.

1. Patience & Self-forgiveness — and large helpings of both.

2. Grammarly — Simply unmatched software for everything to do with the correctness, clarity, and engagement of words.

3. Text-to-Speech Editors—While I can’t see my mistakes, I can hear them. Today, there are so many text-to-speech readers available that are close to a human read and provide a fairly true sense of emotion and writing cadence. My choice is ElevenLabs, though there are many other quality free tools you can find online.

Some famous authors with severe learning disabilities:

Agatha Christie

F. Scott Fitzgerald

George Bernard Shaw

Jules Verne

Octavia Butler

Anne Rice

John Irving

Meet the author

Taylor Tyng is an American author of fantastical fiction for young readers. His first novel, CLARA POOLE AND THE LONG WAY ROUND, was called “an engrossing and inventive flight through the skies” by Kirkus Reviews and a “soaring debut with echoes of Jules Verne and Roald Dahl” by Booklist. Taylor’s second book in the series Clara Poole and the Wrong Way Up is publishes the summer of 2024. 

Taylor Tyng got to writing late. After spending his early years performing in LA rock clubs, Taylor created a design agency and a software company for the advertising and entertainment industries, surrounding himself with the art of storytelling. He’s created designs that have traveled to space, written songs for film, played bit roles in bad movies, and occasionally does dumb things like rocketing down bobsled tracks or snorkeling in Iceland. As a lifelong dyslexic, Taylor never imagined becoming an author was on the list, which only proves how random and remarkable life’s journey can be.

When Taylor isn’t writing he is busy renovating a 1700s farmhouse that just might fall down. He lives outside Boston with his wife, two daughters, and a very busy miniature Australian Shepherd.
You can find more about Taylor and his books at taylortyng.com, on Twitter and Instagram @taylortyng.

About Clara Poole and the Wrong Way Up

Soaring to the top is one thing. Staying there is quite another. The warm and the winning second book in the engrossing middle grade adventure Clara Poole series.

Fresh off winning WOOBA’s One-Hundredth Air Race, Clara Poole should be flying high, but she’s feeling more uncertain than ever. After a summer of negative publicity, she arrives at Air Academy unsure if she even deserves to be there, to train as an aeronaut alongside her new friends . . . only to discover that there are several conditions to her acceptance.

But that becomes the least of her problems when a series of strange accidents throw her and her friends’ safety into question. Circumstances shift from bad to worse when the school’s headmaster goes missing, hurling the academy into disarray and under the iron-grip control of Assistant Head of School, Cyprian Hunt. Friends become enemies, and enemies friends as Clara tries to keep herself out of trouble. But trouble may the one thing she can’t avoid.

With humor, heart, and more death-defying feats that you can imagine, Clara Poole and the Wrong Way Up is a stunning second novel that explores how the journey to get what you want is perhaps more important than the goal itself.

ISBN-13: 9781645951629
Publisher: Pixel+Ink
Publication date: 07/09/2024
Age Range: 8 – 12 Years

Filed under: Guest Post