My name’s Clinton Debogorski. I’m a writer and in grade three my favourite professor Mr. McQuinney called me out of the front of the class during USSR on uninterrupted silent reading time and Mr. McQuinney was known for his corny jokes and his really clean language and never ever were we ever allowed to speak during our silent reading, but one day he caught my attention and called me up to his front desk. He said: “Clinton, come here. Come here for a second,” and I don’t think anyone else noticed because they were so caught up in their reading. He took me to his front desk and I had been reading a book about how to write screenplays for horror films made for TV with a preface by Stephen King called Screamplays and he knew I wanted to be a writer so he whispered into my ear and said, “You know, all you need Clinton to be a good writer is a good bullshit detector. That’s what Hemingway said.” And I just remember being totally floored by the fact that not only was I being encouraged but Mr. McQuinney just said the ‘shit’ word and I never forgot it and I think he’s one of the most inspiring teachers I ever had for that reason and for a lot of other reasons too but that was the one story that stuck out for me.
