Sorry for my late blog, everybody, but
I decided that this week was a good week to procrastinate... I mean,
I was too busy. Yeah, that's it. This week's blog I figured I would
open up to you a little bit. Understand who I am as a person and help
myself get past my low mood level that is keeping me from writing. So
I thought I'd take a trip down memory lane and remind myself WHY I
started writing to begin with and, with your permission, I'd like to
take you with me down this lane.
So sit back, relax, and enjoy a story
of a story teller. Maybe if (or when) you're down and can't write,
you'll recap to your own reasons to why you write.
"I was 13 years old and the summer sun
started to fade away, leaving behind it's unforgivable southern heat
in the month of August. I had just returned from visiting my favorite
relatives in New Hampshire and returned to my life as a good son to a
single, alcoholic father and straight A student in my Middle School
where I was a minority in a violent school.
Up until that point, I only wrote
every now and then. My 7
th grade English Honors teacher
from the previous year had made a thing called 'Free Write Friday'
where everyone would spend 10 minutes just writing. Anything.
Everything. I suppose that was the first time I really put pen to
paper and made something come out. Every Friday I would expand on
what I wrote the previous week and turn that in. My writing wasn't
the best but I received praise for my use of dialogue (when in
reality, I didn't really know what I was doing. I was just assuming
it was right) and encouraged to continue to write, which I didn't
until the following year.
Anyways, as August dragged on I began
to find out that thing's were different from before I went away for
the week. My Dad was always the short tempered type but I found that
it was getting worse. Not in the sense of him, but in the sense that
I took more of a stance against his temper which, in turn, made
arguments and a very hostile trailer to live in. At the time, I began
to feel like no one really cared about what was going on so I didn't
really talk much about it, but I needed an outlet so I started to
write again. I didn't focus on short stories until I was in Junior
year of High School, but I did write poems. Countless poems.
Unrequited love and 'sorrowful' poems that helped me vent the complex
emotions that I couldn't really verbally express.
I started writing my short stories
when I realized that poems were not really doing it for me, anymore.
I wanted to expand and become better as a writer. I didn't really
care before then, I just wrote for the expression and not for the
images or metaphor or how it read, as long as it was out there. But
now I wanted to grow as a writer so that readers would read my
stories or poems and enjoy it instead of suffering and dragging their
way through my writings. So I started to write and I started to
revise and edit. I wanted to tell my story but in a way that made it
readable. It would help me express all my emotions and pain while
becoming a decent enough writer to the point where I might be able to
publish and get my story out there in the world.
I still work and strive to become a
better writer and I have a very long road to go before I feel my
writings are considered great."
So that's my writing story. It's why I
started writing and why I continue to write. So what's your story?
Why did you start writing? What keeps driving you to write that next
sentence or paragraph? Let me know! Or simply write it down for
yourself so that you can keep yourself motivated and know why you
keep doing what you do!
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Check out my blog out every Tuesday for a new blog on writing tips, advice, stories, and so on!!!
