“I can shake off everything as I write, my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn” – Anne Frank
For the last week or so running through my head as a starting of a post was the subject Why I Write. I decided today was the day I was going to try and sit down and express the many reasons I like the written word and why I take such great joy in writing it.
I’ve always been the quiet one in the corner, quietly observing all around me. I pick up on things more than most others and note it and bank it away in my head. I was even held back in kindergarten because I supposedly only really talked to the teacher, but my first best friend was from that class so I must have talked some and put myself out there some. I don’t regret getting held back then though, I think it did help, no matter how little.
I’ve also always had a love of books. I have collected them and read them as long as I can remember. I have also always had some kind of journal for as long as I remember. First I had this little hard bound diary book, I liked it but I found I loved the big spiral notebooks more for it cause I could rattle on and on and not be stopped. I, in fact, have all my old journals stored in my trunk and giggle and kind of get embarrassed of all the things I wrote down. I treasure though that I still have them all. I also still have a huge portion of the notes I wrote, because it was the best way I communicated at first with people.
In fact I started to write a couple story/books while in middle school. I gave the one I was writing at the time to my Modern Lit teacher and she really liked it and where I was going with it. I never touched it after that, but it gave me quite a bit of pride knowing she liked it and thought it was an excellent start to something. The stories are still sitting in that trunk I speak of. My fall back has been not grasping grammar, grammar, and I have never gotten along no matter how many classes I have taken. Where should the semicolon go, where should this go, and what about this? UGH, its basically what stopped me from really going for writing as a job. Yet now I do get paid for what I write in various forms, and I am so grateful for that.
Being quiet as I am in person, I was thrilled when the internet came along, and I was able to meet so many others and speak when I didn’t feel like speaking in person. It helped me grow and meet so many people, including my husband.
I write because I am quiet in person. I write because I am express myself better in that form then in the spoken form. I write to meet people. I write to get my ideas out there. I write to connect. I write because I love it. I write to bare my soul for others to get to know me. I write to grow.
Why do you write?
“Writing is the only thing, that, when I do it, I don’t feel like I should be doing something else” – Gloria Steinem
