How to use this Page

As February comes to an end, we round out Black History Month with a guest post by Pamela M.Tuck, author of As Fast As Words Could Fly. We asked her if there was one person she could choose to be as well-known or remembered as Rosa Parks, who would it be and why?

In a segregated all-black school, a young student was empowered by an African American motivational speaker from Washington, DC. It was 1960s North Carolina and this speaker, in the student’s mind, was famous. The young student was my mother, Pauline Teel, and the speaker was Cortez Peters.

Cortez Peters, Sr. taught himself to type, at the age of 11, on a used typewriter his father had received in a trade. His “hunt and peck” system later developed into a fast and accurate method that garnered him the title of World Typing Champion, with speeds over 100 words per minute. He was the founder of the Cortez W. Peters Business School, which debuted in 1934. It was one of the first vocational schools in Washington, DC to prepare African Americans for business and civil services. The opening of his school became a pivotal point in history for African Americans.

Cortez Peters, Jr. began typing at the age of 12. He eventually surpassed his father’s world record with a typing speed of 225 words per minute with no mistakes.

Both Peters Sr. and Peters Jr. made a career out of teaching their craft to others.

At that unforgettable school visit, Cortez Peters awed my mother and the other students with his rhythmic typing finesse. My mother remembers how his typing mimicked the tunes of many songs, and how he made artistic configurations on his paper. She stated, “He would use all A’s to form the letter A, and all B’s to form the letter B.” His phenomenal typing ability was an amazing entertainment for the students, but his accomplishments as an African American entrepreneur made him an empowering role model.

Cortez gave his formula of success to the students in 3 simple words: Determination, Inspiration, and Perspiration. Determined not to let anyone or anything stop them from reaching their dreams. Inspired to do whatever it takes to accomplish their dreams. And work hard (Perspiration) to make those dreams come true.

Cortez Peters’ formula for success became ingrained into my mother and was one of the driving forces that helped shape her into the successful woman she became. Enough so, that she passed the formula on to me and I have passed it on to my children.

With the impression Cortez Peters made on my mom, I guess it seems fitting that her high school sweetheart, my dad, turned out to be a local typing champion. Ironically, Cortez Peters and my dad unknowingly shared the same formula for success, and As Fast As their Words Could Fly, change was taking place, history was being made, and dreams were coming true.

As a writer you try different things until you find something that works for you. I’ve already decided that I would try writing in the mornings—because I want to make this novel revision a priority in my busy life.

I haven’t done it in earnest yet, my first full week started today. It was rough but I gave myself 30 minutes to actually wake up and drinking strong black tea did wonders. It’s amazing how much you can accomplish in an hour.

My goal is to increment my morning writing by 30 minutes until I’m writing for a full two hours before the day job begins.

I’m also trying out something else. I’ve tried to write longhand but it’s not as fast as when I type. And let me tell you I can type fast. Like 85-90 wpm with almost 90% accuracy. But the problem I’ve found is that when I’m putting in a new scene or just free-writing, I can’t seem to turn my “internal editor” off. I’m always backspacing and correcting and it pulls me out of the story.

So I tried typing with my eyes closed. I peeked just to make sure I wasn’t typing jibberish but once I knew that my fingers were on the right keys, I closed my eyes, visualized the scene and just started typing. It was AWESOME.

Even though it does sound kind of weird, it helps me stay within the scene and not so much worried about the words, grammar and other stuff. I’m right there in the scene with my characters.

Of course, there might be more typos than I usually have, but I also have more words and pages. I’ll keep up this closed eye experiment and see how it can help me out to make my goal of a first round revision draft by December 31st.

Yesterday we co-posted the first of a series of blogs by Diane and Michael Ravitch, authors of The English Reader: What Every Literate Person Needs To Know. Today we present the second article, also available at Moreover, by Diane Ravitch.

I confess that I am distraught by the contemporary paucity of allusion. (more…)

Share This