Why I Write

Hello again! I am back in Boston from my illustrious trip to Houston. On my final flight, I decided to write a little. I couldn't get to my journal, so I typed on my iPhone. This is what I came up with, give or take some corrections.

I'm reading this book…

So I’m reading this book called Why We Write. It’s a compilation of 20 writers that are talking about their experiences as writers and essentially “why I write.” I really like the book so far. I’m about halfway through at the moment. I haven’t read this much in a long while, and I’m glad that I’ve kept at it, even while being at home and traveling all over the place. I may want to get into magazines, but these authors have some great wisdom that I can use for myself. It has me thinking about my own writing and whether or not it’s worth reading.

Do I even want an audience? I have come to learn that I do not have the desire to captivate an audience, but I can talk to big groups of people without getting stage freight. How can such a shy girl be able to project her voice and…dare I say it…socialize? I have developed a fondness for my regulars at work, and there’s quite a few of them. I like them more than some of my co-workers sometimes. But I digress.

Here’s a good question to ask myself: why do I write? Why do I write for school? Why do I write in my journals? Why did I write to my cousin Rodrick while he was incarcerated? Do I like writing more than I really think? Why have I run away from writing so much, for years on end even? Why do people find my major so fitting for me? Am I the last person to see what I am destined to do?

Well, I write for different reasons. I wrote my short stories growing up because I was inspired by an idea and other things around me. I just gathered it all together and formed a story in some way. I still feel some kind of way about my story from eighth grade. My middle school was having a digital book fair, and they were going to take submissions from students. I wrote this lengthy short story in a matter of eight days. I was crushed when my story was immediately shut down. At the time, some of the content I wrote was too mature for someone my age to be writing; I was 13. Nonetheless, I had been writing like a madwoman, and I couldn't do anything with my creation. I think it was at this moment that I wanted to do music more. I love music so much, and I understand it more than the average person. I was able to see that in college, but I also learned that you cannot pursue something you don’t have much practice in.

Sure, I performed here and there throughout school, but I was not dying to take piano lessons. Otherwise, I would have begged my mom to enroll me somewhere. Instead, I did more reading and writing than anything else. My reading was off the charts in middle and high school. I don’t remember so much in middle school, but I visited the library a lot and found all of the new non-fiction titles.

In high school I switched to fiction because I wanted a boyfriend, and that didn't seem to be happening anytime soon. Writing for school assignments were always a drag to me. I just didn't want to do it. I would wait until the eleventh hour and then try to crank out something…or I would just not work on it and take the zero. I still feel that way in graduate school, thought I’m not as simplistic in my writing as I used to be.

In the last few months I've noticed something. I may not want to start writing anything, but once I get going, then things starts to flow out, and then it’s hard to stop. Sometime the outflow was too late for me to capture it all and form a paper worth reading. I have done a disservice to myself just because I don’t like writing papers. I have no writing method like the great authors of Why We Write. My writing just comes straight from my head either after too much has been stored inside or too much time has been wasted and I need to produce something in order to get a grade. I wish to stop this way of writing. I have a gift that I don’t even try to cultivate. Writing should be fun or some escape for me. I do like it. I communicate better in writing, I know.

This is why I am in graduate school. Sure, I may have learned how to be a better writer if I went straight into the workforce, but I doubt I would have totally appreciated the experience as much. I love my professors so much. I wish my work would show how much they are influencing me and opening my eyes to a world I have never known.