Friday 15 March 2013

Why I write #2


I have always written, and my writing was inspired by my reading. I started reading when I was six, with the first booked I started my reading journey with being my Children’s Bible. Shortly after that, just over a year later, I wrote my first short story, entitled The Magic Computer. It had a sad ending (when the computer lost its magic), yet it is one of the only stories that I managed to complete.

I became addicted to reading. The Harry Potter series truly drove this, and I would get so absorbed in my books that the res of the class would be making a ruckus about me, and I would be quietly going about the business of my characters. Talk of World War III in 2001 couldn’t even tear me away from the world of Bilbo Baggins and Artemis Fowl.

I don’t know what lead me to think I could write. I still don’t even know if I can write. Perhaps this optimism in my writing abilities is just because I have been writing for so long, or perhaps just because my zeal for reading caused me to know how to write.

School irritated me because their formatting was just wrong: we had to leave lines between paragraphs (even though they don’t do that in the real books that I read) and their punctuation was all wrong, at least according to how the books were done.

I suppose I write because I am a perfectionist, and as a perfectionist nothing is ever good enough. A writer will just about never be completely satisfied with their work. We could always have done it better.

I know that I write. That much is certain. Does this make me a writer? I do not know: am I genuinely a good writer? Or do I just think that I am because I know how to do it? If I am not a writer, then what am I? I am busy. I am busy finding myself. I am busy learning about who I am, what I am good at, and what I am interested in doing. I don’t know where I am going in life, but I do know that I want to know more.

Writing is my vehicle. As I write, my writing improves, hopefully making me a better writer. Writing takes me to deep places within my mind. Writing delivers parts of myself to paper, and I learn about who I am. I hope that through this, I will gain some direction with my life. Hopefully I will join those who inspired this love for the type and work to instil a drive in others to write. This way I will always have something to read. I write so I will always have a world in which I can disappear, and escape from the possibility of a World War III.

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