How is your stuttering today? What do you do to control or manage it, if anything? Overall, I’d say it is slightly improved with periods of almost complete fluency, but it does sometimes get unpredictably worse or better. When you stutter, you’re never just focusing on one thing, you are often simultaneously trying to find ways around a speech block and hiding any signs of nervousness or embarrassment. Earlier this year, I started doing improv in a stage acting class, where I had to think quickly in the moment and found that this helped with my stuttering. I feel like I’m using a different part of my brain on stage, although I can’t repeat memorized lines as well. This may be because I have the entire English vocabulary at my fingertips and can handpick words I know I won’t stutter on.
What are the biggest challenges stuttering has presented to you? I started a "Life Skills Club" in my junior year of high school and researched several subjects to talk about; topics that we all think about but never question, like, “Why We Have Our Best Ideas in the Shower?" or ‘What Do Our Dreams Really Mean?" Of course, when you stutter it takes a lot of courage to stand up in front of a large audience and talk, questioning whether the perceived embarrassment of stuttering in front of an audience is worth it. So, it’s hard to put myself out there even when I think I have a really good idea that I think needs to be shared. But I think writing and improv have helped me get through many of those hurdles.
Based upon your experiences, what would you like to tell children who stutter? We live in an age where people are far more accepting and, believe it or not, are less likely to think of you as "weird." Looking back, acknowledging my speech to other people with a simple, “great to meet you. I stutter,” would clear up much of the confusion for them and they would be glad I did. Another thing I would say is that there’s nothing more refreshing than meeting the many others who stutter at organizations.
TO ME IT’S MORE ABOUT FINDING MEANING IN OUR PLIGHTS THAN SUCCUMBING TO THEM.
Where did you get the idea for the book? What inspired you to write it? I went to a small school all my life, and there wasn’t anyone else I knew who stuttered. So, I wrote a short story at age fifteen about kids who stuttered going on a terrifying adventure through a mine at night. I’d never really written before, so I showed it to my mom and she said, “Akiva, you wrote this?” and I showed it to my grandfather, a medical writer, who did some edits. He encouraged me to write more stories with stuttering as a theme, because he thought there were numerous medical books about stuttering but not enough, particularly from a teenager's point of view, with the emotions of someone who actually did. I ran into a problem, however. I didn’t have enough time to write. So, I woke up at 5AM each morning to write two hours before school. Before leaving the house, I felt like I had accomplished something valuable for the day. After a few years of throwing out more pages than I actually kept, I finally had a sizable amount of writing that could be used for a book of four stories, The Stutterer's Apprentice.
(continued on page 6 )
Akiva and his grandfather celebrate the book's success on Amazon 7
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