While this piece probably won't be interesting to anyone but me -- today I plan on writing about my relationship with writing. Maybe a few people will find something in my experience that validates a piece of his or hers; who knows? So here I go.
As a kid, I was an optimistic writer. I had high aspirations in that I wanted to be someone who kept a daily journal and wrote stories frequently. This was appealing to me because I've always been weirded out by the fact that I won't remember most of my experiences long-term. Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, I never kept up with the diaries or finished the stories past one or two notebook pages of my messy handwriting. This was frustrating for me, and led to a graveyard in a desk drawer in my childhood bedroom of barely-begun, badly-written kid writing.
Throughout school I was an adequate writer. I did well in English classes because I loved to read; although I mostly didn't enjoy them because I hated to be told how to interpret a piece of literature and thought it ruined the magic of stories. Regardless, it was easy to answer questions about something I'd read, and it didn't take me long or bother me too much to do the assigned readings. My writing ability was slightly behind by reading/analysis, and this always bothered me. I wanted to be creative and funny and talented in this area, and it didn't come as naturally as I would have liked. This pattern of being decently good at English class and getting by pretty well with my writing, as it was supplemented by my love of reading, continued until...
Junior year of high school. It was then that I became an improving writer. I had an amazing teacher who strengthened both my relationship with English and my love of reading. What I didn't expect was how this would affect my writing. I learned that analysis can be subjective, along with how to do this on my own instead of being told how to interpret a piece of writing. Instead of resenting analysis because it picked apart a story until there was nothing left but the cogs of a machine, I began to see it as a key that unlocks a side of literature that is in between the lines. The fact that this section of English could go entirely unnoticed is now unfathomable to me. Through all of this, I started to become a better writer, as well as someone who was much more interested in writing and its relationship to literature.
In my Senior year, something clicked for me and I began a new stage of realizing that my aspirations as a kid weren't totally out of reach. I became a hopeful writer that year. Another amazing high school English teacher showed me how to become an above average, even exceptional writer. In that class, I wrote about poems, books, short films, plays, and movies -- some of which I had never considered before. I grew to enjoy writing not solely in its relationship to novel analysis. In the very last minute, I decided because of this class to major in English. And incredibly, not just for the reading.
My next leap took place last semester, in the second semester of my Freshman year of college. I had seen lots of Odyssey articles shared on Facebook, and often enjoyed reading and sharing them myself. I saw that many of the writers were college students like myself, and I thought, I could do that. So, with the intention of beginning to round out my English skills, and taking on a challenge I never would have considered three years previously, I applied. I tentatively accepted an invitation to join the Odyssey team at JMU, and with that I'm starting to be a well-rounded writer.
I've grown to enjoy this new side of writing -- one that has allowed me to write creatively, to write about topics that interest me, and to expand even further out from my reluctant analysis of a few years prior. I'm excited beyond what I thought I would be to continue honing my skills -- as I am nowhere near a perfect writer. But I'm learning, and experiencing, and practicing, I have goals for my future having to do with writing; and I'm now realizing that a skill doesn't have to come as naturally as breathing for it to matter.
