Benjamin Writer-Messy Handwriting Book
Priya Desai

Inspirations and ideas

I was inspired to write a story about handwriting about two and half years ago. At that time, I was seeing a little boy to help him develop his articulation skills and I could see that for him, handwriting was a laborious task and a struggle. It occurred to me, that there were no inspirational stories available for children to encourage them to develop specific school skills, and so I thought, with this particular boy in mind, “let me try and write a story!”

The character, Benjamin Writer-Messy was created over two years ago. Writing Benjamin has been quite a slow process, with lots of stops and starts and motivational pep-talks. Being in schools, I was able to read Benjamin Writer-Messy to classes, still in its unfinished form and also without illustrations. The children responded to the storyline with interest and this encouraged me to keep going with the story and to also find an illustrator, and try and figure out how to make and publish book.  I contacted an old school friend that is now an artist. Together we did what we could with the story but eventually got to the point where we didn’t know what to do next! Fortunately, my friend was able to find a designer, who with his design team was able to transform Benjamin into Benjamin Writer-Messy. Seeing what was possible with Benjamin Writer-Messy, it became clear there many more real life and endearing stories needed to be written. Stories based specifically within different learning environments, and that target key developmental skills and typical developmental difficulties.

The team of people who have been a part of putting Benjamin together, say that Benjamin Writer-Messy has very much been an epic story from its origins to its completion.  This whole process has been an inspiration to keep going and write many more original stories that highlight weaknesses that children may have at school but also send out two positive messages; the first being that, it is OK to find specific skills hard and the second being, there is always a solution to overcoming a particular skill.

For me the solution is in thinking and searching creatively. This is the message that I hope to convey in each of the stories that I write and this is the way, in which I work as a speech and language therapist.