On Being a Writer,
Dear Mephistopheles,
I have made it to the first interveiw of Governer's Honor's Program (In layman's terms, GHP), so go me. All my LA teachers are enthused about it, you'd think they'd never had a student make it before. Well, I have no problem at all with being nominated, the problem (for me at least) is filling out the application form for the interveiw. O.o It isn't hard to fill out so much as it's difficult to actually put on paper that I haven't won very many awards... (This live journal doesn't count as no one reads it and I probably won't update it again in a billion years.) Mom suggests I use my failings as assets, and I see her logic, if my failings make me good then my accomplishments should make me great... I just can't seem to really believe it, you know. Of course you don't know, you are my bloody computer!
The matter is, however, not whether I make it to GHP, but what it is like to be a writer. Being a writer has little to do with getting published, it is, in my oppinion, a state of mind. A philosophy, if you will. There are two types of writers, annalitical writers and creative writers. This is a generalization as both types have almost the same characteristics, one characteristic may be more apparent in one type of writer than the other. Writers begin when they first desire to write. Anyone can desire to read, and though reading may incourage a writer, it is not a nessisary factor to want to read so much as to be able to read is. One could hypothetically hate reading and still be a writer. Once a person feels that they want to write for their own sake, that is the first step in becoming a writer. Every student has to write something for a teacher, few students want to write for themselves.
Inspiration is the match that ignites the flame which is writing. What a writer actually writes about is the kindling. The passion, the desire to keep writing is the logs. Inspiration drives every individual to do anything, from falling in love to climbing a tree. What inspires a person is unique to every situation, though the same thing might inspire two different people. Jesus, for instance, inspires loads of people, why he inspires them is different every time. Just as unique to the situation is the topic of the writing, no two people write about the same thing for the same reason. Now it's true that millions of people write about computers, but rarely do people write about the same thing involving computers. Passion, however, is unique to every person.
Passion is what really makes a writer a writer. Passion gives a writer to see past the hazy mundane and beyond it (in the case of a creative writer) or through it to the sharpness of reality (in the case of an analitical writer). Passion drives a writer to live their lives in a way that others don't. True writers don't sit in dark rooms dreaming their lives away, with their only caluses on their inkstained fingers. Real writers have caluses on their feet from exploring, their knees from falling, and yes, on their hands, but not simply from the wear of the paper and pen. The caluses on a real writer's hands have been caused by holding things: other hands, children, flowers, hot plates, cold drinks, heavy books, knives, medicine, matches, money, or other differant things; they have been caused by clutching a fist so tight their nails dig into their flesh, by rubbing thmselves together in the cold, by falling, and yes, of course, by putting pen to paper as well.
I have so much more to say, but I can hardly keep my eyes open. Maybe I'll write more tomorrow.
- Pisces_Sum