I've always been a writer.

Whenever things got uncomfortable in my childhood, I wrote my way out of it.

When I needed my first bra, I wrote my mom a note and left it on her bedside table. I don't really remember what that note said, but I know I felt a sense of relief writing such an 'embarrassing' thing down as it was definitively preferable than telling her face-to-face. I mean --- a bra is a big step into big girl land, who knows how she was going to take it. Really, it was more for her convenience than mine.

I used to despise face-to-face confrontation -- and, to a degree, I still do -- as you can say things in the moment that you don't really mean. Writing how my thoughts down has always felt more measured, more honest. It's a way of being able to fully direct your feelings and thoughts to a person in a well thought out manner, to avoid saying the wrong thing.

In elementary and middle school, I would write my friends long essays about how much they meant to me. I've had a wide range of excursions with diaries, each one containing a 3 page summary of my thoughts on the governmental structure and a relative analysis of political thought (in hindsight, this does explain why I love being a political science major). I'd write plays, I wrote stories, I loved being able to be creative in the forms and styles my writing took on. Writing has always felt more like a pleasure than a painful endeavor.

In high school, I would write essays in different styles for classes and I'd find outlets with which to write in my own voice. I just found comfort in the written word in a way that I'd never found through speech. When you say something, there's no delete button. You can't undo what's been said and you can't go back --- through speaking, you can only go forward.

More recently, I began writing for myself. I think this is where I found my voice, truly. I find that my speaking capabilities have been progressively increasing with every essay I write in college. Essays here are all about expressing your thoughts about an issue in an academic and argumentative manner. This has become the way I write and the way that I speak. I find that all the essays I write could be made into speeches -- because for me, writing is speaking.

Writing is eloquent and elegance. There's just something so comforting about writing something awful down and deleting it forever. For all my friends who are going through rough breakups or rough days in general, I always suggest writing it out. For with the clickety-clack that comes from typing you can release all the anger in your mind and come to a more rational conclusion. Writing, so to speak, is therapeutic.

So, addressing the topic at hand; how to write well. The answer is to write how you wish you spoke. Maybe when speaking you prefer slang and colloquialisms but in writing, you can be more mannered, more deliberate. Throw the "'sup bitches" and "waddup squad fam's" out the window and tell the audience how you feel in the rawest way -- through art of the written word.