When I was younger, maybe nine or ten, my sister wrote a novel. It wasn’t a bestseller and it was only for a National Writing Month contest, but it was published in a paperback book with one of her beautiful drawings as the cover. Michelle is the creative one; she always has been. And I, like most younger sisters, wanted to be just like her. I even wrote that I wanted to be her when I was older on a kindergarten assignment.
In sixth grade, I wrote one of the most factually incorrect short stories to possibly ever be written about a boy living during the Great Depression. I was neither a boy nor did I live during the Great Depression, and I did little to no research on the subject. Somehow, and I promise I’m really not sure how I won first place in a local writing contest with it. Then, I won third place in a national writing contest with that same story. Two years later, I entered the same local writing contest, this time with a poem, and won first place in that too. And then I stopped writing.
Sometimes I feel very fortunate, fortunate that writing comes easily to me. It has since I was little and get frustrated when it doesn’t. I remember the first time I got “writer’s block” and I hated every second of not being able to do the one thing I’m supposed to be good at. As overly dramatic as it sounds, writing has become one of those things I don’t think I could live without. I’d rather write than sleep, it comes as easy to me as breathing, and it’s as fun as dancing. I like the ability to see my colors on paper, to have a constructed representation of what’s going on inside my head. The ability to do that is more beautiful than any painting I’ve ever seen in any museum.
I had a teacher my junior year of high school, named after a big red dog, who inspired me to write again, and showed me why I write. Our first assignment that year was to write about our favorite snack food in the most vividly descriptive way possible; he wrote about Star Crunch, but I don’t remember what mine was about. He wrote beautifully about Paris and politics and his stupid dog. He told us to write because we loved doing it, not because he had assigned it. So, that’s why I started writing again. I wrote because I wanted not only to make him as proud of me as he always said he was, but to be able to write like he did, with such excitement and purpose.
I was once forced to read a short piece aloud in one of my classes. I knew the piece was horrendous-- I didn’t understand the prompt thus not possibly being able to correctly do the assignment, others who had read before me had such command of the subject and their papers were practically flawless, and the fear of embarrassment trumped the desire to share my work. But the class lauded my writing and my ability to bring the assignment to life. I don’t like when people tell me that my writing’s good, because I never believe it is. I, quite honestly, don’t think it’s true. I write because I love it, because I can’t possibly see myself doing anything else, not necessarily because I’m good at it.
I write because it’s what comes naturally to me; it gives me an outlet to be creative without having to master the piano or learn the tricks of a paintbrush. I write because I like sharing myself, showing my personality running through the lines. I write because I like books and reading, but the idea of being in books and other reading me is so much more appealing. I write because, in the cheesiest way possible, it allows me to put into words what I can’t say out loud. I write because there are so many beautiful quotes pulled from writing and I want to be able to create one of my own. I write because I want to move people the way that others’ writing has moved me. I write because I see beauty in words, and the ability to create images with them and compose a colorful moment in black and white sentences. I write because I can’t understand science and I hate math. I write because I feel like that’s where I belong-on the page.
