She was older than my other college teachers, with a smoker’s cough, thick glasses and a cackle for a laugh. She also had an accent that suggested British or even Australian heritage.
Her name was Sheila Juba and I was in her playwriting class my sophomore year in college. I’d never taken a playwriting class before as I was an acting major but had also been writing stories and screenplays since I was in high school.
She was coming down the rows, passing out our first assignment which was an extended scene of dialogue between two characters. The setting, characters and theme was completely of our choosing. We just needed to try and have the characters engage each other and have a beginning, middle and end to the scene. I had chosen two older characters, something akin to Waiting For Godot, with one man gentle and sentimental while the other was irascible and tired of living. I’d had fun writing it. The scene came out fairly quickly and I turned it in, forgetting about it until this particular morning when Mrs. Juba began passing back our assignments.
She’d make an observation or dry comment as she passed the scenes back to us. As she approached me she met my eyes, holding my scene out in front of me. Her expression was serious and for a moment I though maybe I’d completely blown the assignment.
“Yours is quite a remarkable little scene, Mr. Kelly,” she said. “Splendidly done.”
I’m pretty sure my smile creased my face from ear to ear.
After class, I went to her desk and thanked her for her comments. She turned to me, eyeing me closely.
“Have you been writing long?”
Not really, I told her. “Just some short screenplays and a few stories.”
She nodded to herself and pointed at me with an unlit cigarette between two fingers.
“You need to keep writing, then. You’ve got some talent for it.”
I think I mumbled thank you. All the way home I felt a flush grow from my chest and cover my face, my ears even ringing a little. It was a feeling I’d never felt before. It was a feeling of confirmation of what I’d felt inside when the best writing came out of me…that the words were working…that they were good. But I never trusted those instincts. But now, for the first time, a woman who had been teaching writing for decades, was telling me that the joy I felt in creating characters and stories was right and good and I needed to acknowledge those feelings and keep writing.
It was something of a revelation to me. Mrs. Juba was the first writer/teacher to encourage me in such a way and I’ve always remembered her fondly for it. Grateful is more accurate.
There are a lot of negatives and high walls in the writing life. But the first time you hear a voice that says ‘well done,’ you never forget it. It’s like rocket fuel. . .and it carries you through many of those dissenting voices in the future to come.
