What Writing Is For Me

Writing is something different for everyone.

“Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it’s the answer to everything. … It’s the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it’s a cactus.”
—Enid Bagnold

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
—George Orwell

“Know your literary tradition, savor it, steal from it, but when you sit down to write, forget about worshiping greatness and fetishizing masterpieces.”
—Allegra Goodman

Sometimes writing as a craft terrifies me. Some believe that to write well you not only have to write from your soul, you have to write away your soul. You have to have an unhappy childhood to draw from. You have to die in the gutter like the reincarnation of Edgar Allan Poe. You have to bleed for the art and die for the art.

I, personally, am not that dramatic. For me, once writing ceases to be enjoyable, it ceases to be meaningful. Now I'm not saying its always easy. I am still young and haven't devoted myself to a career in writing, I don't depend on it for a living or emotional fulfillment at this point in my life. Writing can be boring sometimes, when I come to it uninspired. It can be frustrating when I feel like I am giving my all and creating garbage. It can be terrifying, when I want to remain content and live un-examined for a short while. But in the end, it is peaceful when I do it how and when I ought and want to do it. 

When I was young, all I ever read was fantasy. I loved fantasy. I was enchanted by the worlds created in other authors minds. I absorbed the laws of magical universes and with them a strong hope and optimism for the world around me. Because one thing about fantasy, at least the kind written for children, is there is usually a hero. There is usually some sort of light magic to balance out the dark, and there is always an intense urge to roll back the clouds coming in and see the sun again. I have inherited that urge, that desire for there to be a world where beautiful coincidences happen and the thunder and lightning can always be held at bay by enough love and enough bravery. I know that I don't live in that world, but I do believe in heroes, sometimes to a fault. I believe in people that devote their lives to helping others and I hope one day to be one of those people. I hope one day to be braver and kinder than I am anything else.

For a while I was afraid to write fantasy. I felt like it was silly or stupid, that it wasn't professional and I would never be a good writer if I wrote about things that could never be true, if I unabashedly created my own universes. But while I can write realistically and I do, fantasy is a part of me. It has been since I first began to wander the library shelves looking for enchanting books to take home. Someday I hope to write stories that will teach children to believe in the world just like the books that I devoured as a child taught me.

So for me, writing is escape. I don't think I will ever be a starving artist or a tortured writer. Hopefully, I will be a happy person who writes for the love of it. Maybe that makes me unworthy to call myself a writer. I don't think so. The stories and poems that I create when I am inspired to contain so much more of my soul and self than the ones that I force myself to write. It's like writing with a pen that has no ink, scratching the words into the paper. Isn't it better to wait for the pen to be full, and to write when the words come flowing out? Writing can be as much a gift to yourself as it is a gift to the world. It can be healing, enlightening, fun, and relaxing. It can help the world become clear, or it can clear your mind. 

So for all the writers out there who feel like the enjoyment of writing isn't good enough, it is. It's the enjoyment of it and the love of it that make it worthwhile. I hope someday that people will read what I write and that it will be meaningful to them, but above all I want it to be truthful to who I am, and add to rather than subtract from my life.




Quotes from Writer's Digest
http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/72-of-the-best-quotes-about-writing