How My Dyslexic Brain Turned Me Into a Writer

I have a confession to make. Even though I’m a writer, I once hated reading more than anything. As a child diagnosed with dyslexia, it was my true nemesis. I couldn’t get through a single page, and I didn’t want to. Every book I tried felt like a grueling exam. I remember the teacher asking the class whether we understood the meaning of the sentences we were reading, while I was still stuck just trying to sound out the words. So around the age of eight, when all the kids in my class could already read and I still couldn’t, I made a vow: I would never read a book in my life.Luckily, my older sister Michal had other plans.

Unlike me, Michal was a serious bookworm. One night, after I’d gone to bed, she came into my room, sat down beside me, and announced in a theatrical voice: “Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we’ll be reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Please settle into your beds and enjoy the show.” I was, of course, the only one in the audience and the combination of books and an annoying older sister sounded like the worst thing in the world. But as the little brother, I didn’t really have a say. So Michal began reading the book aloud, night after night, to her captive audience.

At first, I thought she was unbearable. But before long, I found myself curious about the plot, drawn into Harry Potter’s world. I fell in love with the story, and when my sister finished the book, I turned to her and said, “Okay, I think tomorrow we should start the second one.” But Michal turned out to be a shrewd negotiator. She agreed on one condition: that I read a few pages from each chapter myself. Reading was the last thing I wanted to do, but unfortunately, it was the only way to find out what happened to Harry in his second year at Hogwarts. And that’s how I started reading and I haven’t been able to stop since.

(Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little. When I was binge-watching Succession on HBO, I didn’t exactly have time for books.)

The Hebrew version of Harry Potter

One of the brain regions often involved in dyslexia is Broca’s area, the region responsible for language production, grammar, and parts of verbal working memory. It’s likely that my own struggles with reading had something to do with how this region was functioning. One of the most important things I’ve learned through studying cognitive neuroscience is that dyslexia isn’t one-size-fits-all. I had an incredible neuroscience professor, Naama Friedmann, who was intrigued by the idea of a writer with dyslexia and offered to run a deeper assessment. That’s when I discovered that my specific challenge was with something called the phonological output buffer, a part of working memory that temporarily holds the sounds of words as we prepare to say them out loud. There are different types of dyslexia, some tied more to visual processing, others to how the brain hears and breaks down the sounds in words, and each one involves different brain regions. In my case, the letters and sounds simply wouldn’t line up in my mind the way they were supposed to.

It’s not something I can control or change, but I think the most important lesson my sister taught me is that if the story is interesting enough, I’ll find a way to work through the difficulty. Over the years, I’ve learned all kinds of strategies to improve my reading: breaking words into smaller parts, linking new words to things I already know so they’re easier to remember and recognize the next time I see them. Honestly, I never thought I could be a writer because of my dyslexia—and if it weren’t for Word’s spellcheck, that might have been true. But writing and reading felt like the only ways I could truly understand and express myself in the world. So with the help of a supportive family and a deep love for stories, I found a way.

Around sixth grade, my parents took me to a psychologist, who wrote in her report that I would likely always struggle to read and write in a second language. The post you're reading right now was written in my second language, English. My first language is Hebrew. If I have one message for parents or teachers of kids with dyslexia, it’s this: don’t decide for them what their ceiling is going to be. It’s so important to be honest about the challenges and not pretend they don’t exist, but just because a child reads differently doesn’t mean they won’t eventually arrive at the same destination as everyone else.I still deal with my dyslexia on a daily basis. Sometimes it means spending an hour on a short email just to make sure there are no spelling mistakes (and sometimes there still are). Other times, it means using text-to-speech software to make sure I haven’t missed a word in a scientific article I’m reading. When I published my first short story collection, Jerusalem Beach, someone asked me why the first story, just 60 pages long, had around 30 chapters, a chapter every two pages on average! Looking back, I realized that as a kid, the hardest thing for me to read was a long block of text with nowhere to pause. So, almost automatically, I overcompensated, breaking the story into small, breathable segments, so the reader wouldn’t feel that same difficulty I once did.

For better and for worse, my struggle with language and reading has made me deeply aware of how language works, and especially how it’s perceived by other people. So, paradoxically, it might be that despite all the difficulty, my dyslexia made me more of a writer. And hey, if you ever got a book from me with a dedication that spelled your name wrong, now you know why.

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