Why I Write How I Write
(A while back I posted the "Why I Write" essay for my Creative Writing class. This was the second part of it, the edits, about why we write "how" we write.)
Why I Write How I Write
Outside of the secluded circle of people who write, it’s hard to explain why anyone would even want to do it. Sure, it’s easy for anyone who’s spent an entire evening in, pouring over a new journal with an ink pen, anyone who’s scribbled one-liners on the little space between the three hole punch and spiral spot of the notebook during biology class, to understand why you would take the time to create, to exit from the real world, to make fantasy out of reality and let your feet leave the earth for just the tiniest of moments. I’ve tried explaining that to biochemistry majors, mathematics majors, my mother, my coworkers, and I see the examples soar over their heads, their feet still on the ground. So I’ve got a multitude of reasons to sit down and write something, but an even more excessive amount to make sure how I do it is the right way. How I write has changed over the years, naturally, current writer me laughs at eight-year old writer me when I think about rhyming “love” with “dove” - but how I write has always been to make sure that it’s the way that allows me to wave my paper in the face of someone who doesn’t understand why I do it and say, “Look! See! See what I’ve done! Words, words everywhere, words that can blow the doors off the place and make you stand there and wonder, how did they do it?!” How I write is detailed, honest, full of mistakes, and perfect; that much has remained constant.
Age 6
I write hard, press down on the paper with my Ticonderoga pencil probably harder than I should. In my six year old head, pressing the pencil down on the paper this harshly is me getting my point across, putting my foot down and making a dramatic statement of independence. Making sure that my I’s are dotted properly and my T’s have the appropriately crossed lines to make sure they’re not confused for L’s or the I’s I just tried to perfect so excruciatingly. I can see my teachers and teacher’s aides standing at the front of the room talking hushed amongst one another. I am the only kid left in the classroom, everyone has left to go out to play, because recess is a nice fifteen minutes of freedom, the prelude to summer vacations we haven’t yet experienced, and haven’t yet realized we’ll miss once their gone in about fifteen years. I’m still in the classroom because I’m stringing my sentences together in a perfectly legible way, writing long sentences - well, long in comparison to the rest of my class, overachieving since 1995 - because I’ve just discovered how wonderful it is to be able to do this, to write what I’m thinking instead of speaking it because more often than not, my words aren’t heard. So I enjoy the quiet in the back corner of the classroom, until of course Mrs. Vigil comes over and tells me I have to go to recess (Had to. I didn’t know anything about having to do things yet but I could tell I wasn’t going to like it). So I’d go out on the playground and sit in my room and imagine what kinds of words I would write next time I was given a chance to write, which became more and more often as I got older, letting me make my claim, make grandiose statements of love and loss and teenage angst and twenty-something American living.
Age 12
I wrote like fucking Shakespeare. Which is ironic because up until this point, I’d never read a single piece of Shakespeare, and up until this point right now, I’ve only really enjoyed one play of his. But I’d seen ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and thought Leonardo DiCaprio was chiseled from stone by angels, so naturally it was up to me to carry the flame of romantic writers, past and present. So I wrote the only way I think I knew I could, which was five page long poems about boys I’d met only once but was sure we were going to fall in love and get married sometime in the near future, crafted songs even though I couldn’t play a guitar if the strings were plucked for me or carry a tune in a bucket, yadda yadda. I wrote in the first person, almost obnoxiously so, so much so that anyone who picked up something I’d written would think me the most narcissistic twelve year old they’d ever met, unless of course they were smart enough to realize that I just hadn’t come into my own yet, that how I was writing now was just an indicator that I needed to keep writing, because at least from my perspective, I knew the talent was there.
I also wrote dangerously. I got my first journal when I was around this age, and I cleaved to it like it was the most important thing in my life (entries in this journal might have convinced the reader otherwise). It was sea foam green and soft to the touch, with an easy to pick lock and not nearly enough pages for me, Shakespeare’s apprentice, love guru to the stars. I would write about boys and school and softball and the crush I thought I had on someone who was quite a bit older than me (I’ve learned to censor myself now, see?) and did it all in secret, more secret than having written it in my “secret” journal in the first place. I crafted my own language and wrote in it. It was mostly acronyms and initials and switching a letter here or there and making up nicknames for things that no one would every guess I was actually referencing, things that sometimes even I forgot. The most thrilling part was, I’d leave my journal places, just to see if anyone would read. If they’d figure out my secrets, if they’d call me on them and demand an explanation. I don’t know if anyone ever did, because no one ever told me anything otherwise. Looking back I’m realizing that the language I created, the thrill I took out of taking words and turning them on their side, making the reader wonder what I was going on about and have it be stuck in their heads until the figured it out, well, that was just a precursor for what was to come.
Age 18
I write freely, ridiculously, competitively, romantically. I am self-aware, self-indugent, and frankly, I’m annoying. I’m almost certain I spent the entire second semester of my required senior year of religion class writing short stories based on characters I’d read or the boy across the room from me because only my best friends would read them, and only they’d offer the best commentary I could get. They make me write competitively, because I have had the unfortunate (well, depending on how you look at it) luck of having always surrounded myself with people I feel to be inherently more brilliant than I, people who can craft the witty sentences I only wished I could, people who were actually maybe going to have their books published one day while I pined for that level of authority. I write ridiculous stories to make my boyfriend laugh, because he’s the one who made me watch Monty Python movies first and I feel like I owe my somewhat wacky sense of humor to him, if one can owe a sense of anything to anyone else. And I write romantic diatribes to him, now having actually read some Shakespeare, having studied the Romantics and knowing what it felt like to have subtly sexual poetry read to you in the middle of a park in the middle of a hot Spring day in Los Angeles.
And this is where I begin to realize that why I’m writing and how I’m writing are two very connected things. I’m writing to prove myself, sure, because ‘Mean Girls’ had it right, high school is that rough, and I’m worried about getting into college and making my parents proud and not letting down anyone I thought gave a damn. But how I’m doing it, well, that makes the why even more important. Because anyone can put words together, anyone can right click on their computer and find an appropriate synonym for “love” or “hate” or “happy”, and anyone can study the MLA Style Guide and figure out how they should place their semicolons. But if I don’t pay attention to any of that, if I read books no one else is reading and write on a Friday night instead of drinking cheap beer with people I don’t like, then I can craft those perfect sentences and make a statement and make myself feel like I’ve created something beautiful. So I write not so cautiously optimistically, sarcastically and the beginnings of longwindedly, and with a vendetta against all AP test takers, writers, administrators. I write fearfully and daringly.
Age 22 (Now)
I don’t write. I should rephrase, as editing has become my forte: I hardly write anything more than I have to. I write thesis statements and do research when asked. I dissect prompts and compile bibliographies and bore myself to death in class. I write in short sentences, sometimes applying commas to connect similar ideas; to make my points clear and footnotes discernable. I write out of my ass, not knowing what I’m talking about half of the time. But my history of writing wistfully, fearfully, daringly, has made this feel safe. I can lie my way out of a paper, I’ve lied my way out of journals and crushes, for God sake. But I know I should write. I know I should write because sometimes young classmates die in car crashes two months into college, because sometimes planes crash into towers when you’re still rubbing the sleep out of your eyes, because sometimes you wake up and your dad isn’t there anymore, and you don’t know when he will be again. I should write long-winded sentences because sometimes you talk and scream and cry so much sometimes that the wind has been sucked out of your lungs against your will, because I read one Allen Ginsberg poem and I think I can, because people like being kept on the edge of their seats because they’re tired of writing research papers, too, they’re dying for something to cling to, to eat, to crave, to wonder about in those strange few minutes between alertness and sleep. I should be painfully honest and painfully humorous, because if you can’t be either of those things, there’s almost no use in existing, no use in getting to use hyperboles like that and turning the world on it’s head. So I write hard, I write soft, I write long, I write in short spurts, I write honestly and I write truths, I write.
Why I Write How I Write
Outside of the secluded circle of people who write, it’s hard to explain why anyone would even want to do it. Sure, it’s easy for anyone who’s spent an entire evening in, pouring over a new journal with an ink pen, anyone who’s scribbled one-liners on the little space between the three hole punch and spiral spot of the notebook during biology class, to understand why you would take the time to create, to exit from the real world, to make fantasy out of reality and let your feet leave the earth for just the tiniest of moments. I’ve tried explaining that to biochemistry majors, mathematics majors, my mother, my coworkers, and I see the examples soar over their heads, their feet still on the ground. So I’ve got a multitude of reasons to sit down and write something, but an even more excessive amount to make sure how I do it is the right way. How I write has changed over the years, naturally, current writer me laughs at eight-year old writer me when I think about rhyming “love” with “dove” - but how I write has always been to make sure that it’s the way that allows me to wave my paper in the face of someone who doesn’t understand why I do it and say, “Look! See! See what I’ve done! Words, words everywhere, words that can blow the doors off the place and make you stand there and wonder, how did they do it?!” How I write is detailed, honest, full of mistakes, and perfect; that much has remained constant.
Age 6
I write hard, press down on the paper with my Ticonderoga pencil probably harder than I should. In my six year old head, pressing the pencil down on the paper this harshly is me getting my point across, putting my foot down and making a dramatic statement of independence. Making sure that my I’s are dotted properly and my T’s have the appropriately crossed lines to make sure they’re not confused for L’s or the I’s I just tried to perfect so excruciatingly. I can see my teachers and teacher’s aides standing at the front of the room talking hushed amongst one another. I am the only kid left in the classroom, everyone has left to go out to play, because recess is a nice fifteen minutes of freedom, the prelude to summer vacations we haven’t yet experienced, and haven’t yet realized we’ll miss once their gone in about fifteen years. I’m still in the classroom because I’m stringing my sentences together in a perfectly legible way, writing long sentences - well, long in comparison to the rest of my class, overachieving since 1995 - because I’ve just discovered how wonderful it is to be able to do this, to write what I’m thinking instead of speaking it because more often than not, my words aren’t heard. So I enjoy the quiet in the back corner of the classroom, until of course Mrs. Vigil comes over and tells me I have to go to recess (Had to. I didn’t know anything about having to do things yet but I could tell I wasn’t going to like it). So I’d go out on the playground and sit in my room and imagine what kinds of words I would write next time I was given a chance to write, which became more and more often as I got older, letting me make my claim, make grandiose statements of love and loss and teenage angst and twenty-something American living.
Age 12
I wrote like fucking Shakespeare. Which is ironic because up until this point, I’d never read a single piece of Shakespeare, and up until this point right now, I’ve only really enjoyed one play of his. But I’d seen ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and thought Leonardo DiCaprio was chiseled from stone by angels, so naturally it was up to me to carry the flame of romantic writers, past and present. So I wrote the only way I think I knew I could, which was five page long poems about boys I’d met only once but was sure we were going to fall in love and get married sometime in the near future, crafted songs even though I couldn’t play a guitar if the strings were plucked for me or carry a tune in a bucket, yadda yadda. I wrote in the first person, almost obnoxiously so, so much so that anyone who picked up something I’d written would think me the most narcissistic twelve year old they’d ever met, unless of course they were smart enough to realize that I just hadn’t come into my own yet, that how I was writing now was just an indicator that I needed to keep writing, because at least from my perspective, I knew the talent was there.
I also wrote dangerously. I got my first journal when I was around this age, and I cleaved to it like it was the most important thing in my life (entries in this journal might have convinced the reader otherwise). It was sea foam green and soft to the touch, with an easy to pick lock and not nearly enough pages for me, Shakespeare’s apprentice, love guru to the stars. I would write about boys and school and softball and the crush I thought I had on someone who was quite a bit older than me (I’ve learned to censor myself now, see?) and did it all in secret, more secret than having written it in my “secret” journal in the first place. I crafted my own language and wrote in it. It was mostly acronyms and initials and switching a letter here or there and making up nicknames for things that no one would every guess I was actually referencing, things that sometimes even I forgot. The most thrilling part was, I’d leave my journal places, just to see if anyone would read. If they’d figure out my secrets, if they’d call me on them and demand an explanation. I don’t know if anyone ever did, because no one ever told me anything otherwise. Looking back I’m realizing that the language I created, the thrill I took out of taking words and turning them on their side, making the reader wonder what I was going on about and have it be stuck in their heads until the figured it out, well, that was just a precursor for what was to come.
Age 18
I write freely, ridiculously, competitively, romantically. I am self-aware, self-indugent, and frankly, I’m annoying. I’m almost certain I spent the entire second semester of my required senior year of religion class writing short stories based on characters I’d read or the boy across the room from me because only my best friends would read them, and only they’d offer the best commentary I could get. They make me write competitively, because I have had the unfortunate (well, depending on how you look at it) luck of having always surrounded myself with people I feel to be inherently more brilliant than I, people who can craft the witty sentences I only wished I could, people who were actually maybe going to have their books published one day while I pined for that level of authority. I write ridiculous stories to make my boyfriend laugh, because he’s the one who made me watch Monty Python movies first and I feel like I owe my somewhat wacky sense of humor to him, if one can owe a sense of anything to anyone else. And I write romantic diatribes to him, now having actually read some Shakespeare, having studied the Romantics and knowing what it felt like to have subtly sexual poetry read to you in the middle of a park in the middle of a hot Spring day in Los Angeles.
And this is where I begin to realize that why I’m writing and how I’m writing are two very connected things. I’m writing to prove myself, sure, because ‘Mean Girls’ had it right, high school is that rough, and I’m worried about getting into college and making my parents proud and not letting down anyone I thought gave a damn. But how I’m doing it, well, that makes the why even more important. Because anyone can put words together, anyone can right click on their computer and find an appropriate synonym for “love” or “hate” or “happy”, and anyone can study the MLA Style Guide and figure out how they should place their semicolons. But if I don’t pay attention to any of that, if I read books no one else is reading and write on a Friday night instead of drinking cheap beer with people I don’t like, then I can craft those perfect sentences and make a statement and make myself feel like I’ve created something beautiful. So I write not so cautiously optimistically, sarcastically and the beginnings of longwindedly, and with a vendetta against all AP test takers, writers, administrators. I write fearfully and daringly.
Age 22 (Now)
I don’t write. I should rephrase, as editing has become my forte: I hardly write anything more than I have to. I write thesis statements and do research when asked. I dissect prompts and compile bibliographies and bore myself to death in class. I write in short sentences, sometimes applying commas to connect similar ideas; to make my points clear and footnotes discernable. I write out of my ass, not knowing what I’m talking about half of the time. But my history of writing wistfully, fearfully, daringly, has made this feel safe. I can lie my way out of a paper, I’ve lied my way out of journals and crushes, for God sake. But I know I should write. I know I should write because sometimes young classmates die in car crashes two months into college, because sometimes planes crash into towers when you’re still rubbing the sleep out of your eyes, because sometimes you wake up and your dad isn’t there anymore, and you don’t know when he will be again. I should write long-winded sentences because sometimes you talk and scream and cry so much sometimes that the wind has been sucked out of your lungs against your will, because I read one Allen Ginsberg poem and I think I can, because people like being kept on the edge of their seats because they’re tired of writing research papers, too, they’re dying for something to cling to, to eat, to crave, to wonder about in those strange few minutes between alertness and sleep. I should be painfully honest and painfully humorous, because if you can’t be either of those things, there’s almost no use in existing, no use in getting to use hyperboles like that and turning the world on it’s head. So I write hard, I write soft, I write long, I write in short spurts, I write honestly and I write truths, I write.