I first studied dyslexia when I was taking a psych class in high school. Reading about the symptoms, I realized I was having many of them right then and there. I had been told my whole life that my poor reading skills were due to possibly having ADD, but for some reason, reading was the only skill heavily affected by this. After watching many videos, and actually having the chance to converse with some of the most influential researchers of dyslexia at that time, it became clear to me that I fell in this category.

Sure I was a mild, self-diagnosed case, as I still have some reading comprehension, but I could pick out most of the symptoms listed by others and identify with them. It typically takes me around 30 minutes to read a single page of my coursework in college. While my letters and words experience movement such as reflection and reversals, these are not the most definitive symptoms. Many times I will simply stare at a word and cannot remember it’s meaning, or if it is a real word at all.

After learning all of this, I became so fired up that I attempted to make my own set of graphemes that would be less likely to move, with more identifiable and memorable characteristics. I created this “font” as some called it (although it was actually a transliteration of our English alphabet) and began to print it off and read it. After much research on obscure linguistic theories and methods of comprehension, I felt that I had honed my “font” to help a portion of dyslexic people that might have similar symptoms to myself. I consulted with Christian Boer and tried to get a large enough test group to try out the “font” on kids who struggled with reading. Unfortunately my idea was largely shot down after I met with a lot of individuals from the Kentucky school systems, saying that it wasn’t feasible. Sadly, I began focusing on other avenues and decided to put away that endeavor.

As I started to write my book (Holt’s Almanac) at 19 years old, wherein it was foremost an exercise for my mind, and the plot had no direction at all. Grammarly was extremely helpful in filling the gaps of my constant errors and misspellings. Needless to say, I would probably not have been able to be an author with my dyslexic symptoms before these amenities were around. It took a considerable amount of methodical time to get the book from that stage to now, and there are still a few errors in the published work, but that is to be expected without an editor. I hope that anyone who reads it can look past any of these errors and see Holt’s Almanac for the plot. I additionally hope that if any of my audience is struggling with dyslexia, that they are encouraged by this: I am a horrible reader, but I was still able to write a book.