Start From The Beginning

While this isn't necessarily creative, posting it does allow me to post my teacher's response, and brag, and I will take that and run with it.

Assignment: Write 1-2 pages on why you write... What made you want to become a writer? What inspires you? How do you maintain discipline? What keeps you going? You can (also) discuss a book/author that has been/is influential for you and your craft.

Submitted:

Why I Write

Writing is actually quite a curious thing for me, and I don’t think I have quite the relationship with it that most writers do. Allow me to explain. I grew up reading; it was my favorite pastime and, for the most part, still is. My mother delighted in this, and showered me with fantasy and science fiction, hoping to aid the burgeoning author in me, and, at first, succeeded. I wrote the typical Mary Sue stories in middle school: young girl similar to me, possibly even sharing my name, runs away from home into the forest where she lives with the fairies as she is their prophesied one. Luckily, it wasn’t long before I realized that these stories were neither original nor, in any way, good. It was then, also, that things started to change.

It took me a while, but I eventually came to realize that just because I loved to read, consuming books voraciously in my spare time, didn’t mean that I was a writer. I lacked the ideas necessary to create something new or interesting, and what ideas I did foment I could never see through to completion. What I could do, though, was edit. And editing not only allowed me a way to help my friends (many of whom are writers), it gave me a chance to be the nitpicky, annoying, perfectionist that I am without being a brat for it. I could get away with, and even get paid for it!

This isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy writing, or am completely awful at it. If I am given a prompt, more often than not I can come up with something that will tickle the fancy of many reading it. But I, personally, don’t feel that this qualifies me as a writer. Ultimately, writing is not what I would like to do for a living. Observing that process, however, is fascinating and I hope will allow me to understand the minds of those who would.

Feedback: "You are a writer, I can attest to that." I had this teacher last semester for literature from Chaucer to Milton, and she is pretty awesome. That made me smile a lot.