why i write+
Why do I write? The first several days I pondered this question, I repeatedly arrived at the same answer: “I have no idea.” My relationship with writing has fluctuated drastically over my lifetime ranging from good to romantic to deplorable. When I was young, I was not an aspiring writer or someone who wanted to write novels when I grew up. I loved reading. I identified as a reader as a child, and would have competitions with whoever I could over who could read the most books in a summer (although I was a slow and contemplative reader, so I never won). I prided myself on having a higher reading level on the proficiency tests in elementary school than my peers. I loved reading fiction, and as a result I naturally came up with stories that I thought I would maybe want to write down sometime. Like most kids, I had a wild imagination and constantly came up with fictional stories (mostly adventure) that I never wrote down. At this point in my life, while I didn’t identify as a writer, I had a strong relationship with words written down.
Once I was in middle school, I was introduced to formulaic writing. We learned how to make a paragraph that resembled a hamburger? The buns were the topic and conclusion sentences, and each layer of meat, lettuce, tomato, and cheese was a variation of the same sentence of analysis. I was great at those. This was my first experience with made-to-order academic writing. Then we were introduced to the five-paragraph essay, and the rest—as they say—was history. I got an A in every English class in middle school and English class was easy. This is when I started to believe I had some skill at writing, and therefore started to like it. Of course, this perceived “skill” came through the external validation of grades, which is cause for suspicion.
Alas, there was hope for my writing career and me! In my first year of high school I chose to enroll in the honors English class. This class was hard. My teacher was picky and demanded we stray from the five-paragraph essay for analyzing text. She capped our usage of has, have, had, is, as, were to five times per paper. My next teacher, Mrs. Martin, was even better. She changed the way I use writing and the way I think. She taught me to avoid logical fallacies in my writing, to use tropes and schemes, to deconstruct a sentence, to read 1600 British literature (and to understand it). My writing skills were stretched and unbounded in this class. While strict rules of writing were adhered to, the structure allowed for a freedom and exploration of language that was not possible before. Sometimes, a strict form allows for the most creative and artistic language—Shakespeare wouldn’t be the same without his iambic pentameter. It was at this time—my junior year of high school—that I truly appreciated the craft of writing. I loved when I put a sentence together and it was precisely accurate and the words bounced off one another creating a beautiful sound. I wanted to show people that sentence. That sentence was art.
In the four years since, I have mostly lost that appreciation of the craft of writing. I included a summary of a history of my writing, in part to point out that all of my writing and nearly all of my reading occurred via school. I wrote and read, especially once the school year started, only when my teachers assigned it. Once my free time became very constrained, I no longer prioritized reading enough to include it in my limited time devoted to hobbies. Although not ideal, this was okay in high school. I was in English classes that assigned classic and masterful works of writing including novels, poems, short stories by authors like Hemingway, Twain, Virginia Wolf, Fitzgerald, and the classics. So, I was reading a lot, and I was reading excellent writing. Reading, for me, is what instills the appreciation of the craft of writing. When I read something beautiful, it inspires me to write something beautiful.
However, this proved problematic once I entered college. My assigned reading no longer included the classics or anything remotely creative. My assigned reading was academic papers, and news articles (which I do, I will say, enjoy). I am ashamed to say, I have only read a handful of novels on my own time in past few years. I could list them all on two hands. Unsurprisingly, my anxiety toward writing has grown dramatically over the last couple of years. Without reading, I find it difficult to write with style. I have no craftsmanship in my writing.
In the documents that I read—studies and academic papers—it is a good thing for the writing to be in plain, clear, and concise language. Elaborate sentences with figurative language or allusions would be distracting and inappropriate. Also, researchers, stereotypically, are not writers. The texts emphasize content without much care to the way in which that content is delivered. In much of my academic writing, I also should be writing clearly and concisely...that’s about the only requirement for the delivery of content. The majority of my writing in the last three years has been research papers or argumentative essays. I should note that I do not necessarily think that academic writing cannot be solidly constructed, and delivered in pleasant fashion. However, intricacy of form and language in this context is not demanded, so it often does not exist. Now, since I have deprived myself of artistic reading and stopped practicing challenging diction in my writing, I no longer know how to do it very well.
I have given a plentitude of background information, but still have not explicitly answered the question of why I write. I write because I have something I want to communicate with the world. I write because I care. I write because there are injustices and problems in the world. I write because a paper was assigned to me. I write because—sometimes—I have something to say.
However, lately every time I set out to write about something that matters to me, I find myself bored by my own writing. I find that without the craftsmanship that I used to find joy in, writing gives me the same sort of anxiety that speaking does. It doesn’t come out right; it isn’t clear; it is boring; it sounds preachy, etc. Like many others have said before me, I find that I do not quite know what I think until it is written down. Yet, nowadays I find that I have trouble writing it down as well.
I write because I have something important to communicate, but I can’t find the words. I think this anxiety comes in a large part from my lack of reading. However, I also lack a sense of authority in my writing. As I get older, I become more acutely aware of how little I know about virtually every topic. I am not an expert on any field and probably not on any thing. Therefore asserting my opinion, without citing opinions of experts for validation, feels wrong—even in non-academic writing.
While I have a ways to go to reclaim the appreciation of writing I once had, acknowledging where I am in my writing is productive. I know my strengths, and have identified some weaknesses. Now it is time to read. And write.