Original Essay

Here is my very first Why I Write Essay attempt. View the comments below the essay or click on the download at the bottom of the page to get a better idea of the revisions that I planned to make in my next draft.

 Why I Write

               I write simply because in my Kindergarten class, the para-pro sitting with me at the back table put a pen in my hand. She was writing the caption to an illustration of mine, and as I was telling her what to write, she interrupted with “You do it.”  I put pen to paper, and I was able to sound out what I was saying and spell out the caption. After that I wrote all of the time… when people told me too. I was always writing for school. I gave my teachers what they wanted. At that time writing was a process of figuring out what answer the teacher wanted and giving it to them. I used the thesaurus in the Word toolbox to get myself the vocabulary points, and I made sure to include a topic sentence in each of my paragraphs too.  This was the way I wrote, and an assignment [KC1] was the only reason I wrote for a long time.

During the summer before high school, I was digging through my closet, and I found this journal. The cover had brown bears wearing people’s clothes sitting on a bench together. Where did it come from? No clue. I opened the front cover to find an “About Me” page. I wrote it when I was 10, or so I read along with a variety of other facts that I deemed important at the time like “Favorite TV Show” and “Favorite Food.”  On the next page, written in a loopy cursive, were the words “Dear Journal[KC2] ” but nothing followed but a blank page. It was almost like a calling to write – just for me. I made an entry and continued to do so once every year, eventually it became once a month. I couldn’t stay away from the journal for that one. There was an exhilaration about writing about what I cared about. I still write an entry in that book with the bears on it when I come across it[KC3] .

People have always told me: “You think too much.”  What they usually mean by this is that I say too little, which I guess does give me more time to think. I feel that I am trapped in my own mind, lost in a sea of scattered thoughts, and my ideas usually never make[KC4]  it out in one piece. Trying to articulate my thoughts aloud has never been easy on me, and knowing that only makes my heart beat louder when I have to express myself in front of others, which makes it even harder to concentrate on getting the words out in the right order. A phrase usually came out indecently with “like” and “um” littered throughout[KC5]  it.  I hate not being able to do things well, and writing provided a way in which I could get my thoughts across in a way that people understood and appreciated. I guess the words in my head always seemed to pour out onto the page better than they ever did out of my mouth. Even though my speech rarely did justice to the thoughts in my head, when I was writing, my thoughts seemed to escape my mind in an even clearer way.

I love writing. Stating that in writing kind of seems bold, but if I didn’t have it in my life I would really miss it. I feel like I need it to keep me sane[KC6] , which is why I keep writing.  All of the thoughts swimming around inside of me start to make sense once I get words on the page. Writing allows me to break out of my head. I started journaling in the Notes section of my email account one summer, once I decided to write more than the book with the bears on it would permit, and what started off as record keeping of my days turned into a series of mini essays. It turned into somewhat of a blog that only I could see[KC7] . Writing became a way to examine my past experiences and to make sense of what had happened throughout my life. The questions left unanswered from those experiences finally had a chance to be explored. The more difficult the question, the more satisfying a paper was when I had truly answered it. I write because of the answers it provides to all of the jumbled questions[KC8]  in my head.

While writing in class and in my own spare time, I have found that I am attracted to the act of writing because of the chance to explore questions that don’t offer a clear answer or resolution from the start. Not only do these questions allow me to confront my opinions on the world around me and to deeply examine[KC9]  issues, but I get to go on a journey as I write. Writing in college and for myself has taught me a lot about life. Through writing, I have learned to accept that no resolution can sometimes be a resolution[KC10] . In life and in writing that realization has saved me from the insanity that comes from searching for an answer that does not exist. Writing has provided me with a new perspective as well. Instead of accepting the norm, I find myself questioning it more as I grow as a writer. I want there to be a reason for everything, or at least a reason for the lack of a reason, and writing helps me find these answers.


 [KC1]Universal: doing something only because someone has asked you too.

 [KC2]Why was this page blank? Was I unable to write for my own enjoyment at this time? Did this OPEN PROMPT: “Dear Journal” provide my first opportunity to write freely? And what does that mean to write freely?  Perhaps, to write without fear of straying from the topic or losing points during evaluation.

 [KC3]Reorganize paragraphs. Need transition.  Connect back to writing outside of expectations or evaluation.

 [KC4]Finding a way to please. Connect to pleasing others.

 [KC5]Sounding dumb.

Losing credibility. Writing proved I wasn’t as unintelligent as I spoke.

Writing as a method of proving intelligence.

Relate to desire to prove oneself.

 [KC6]Sanity? Why is this in here? How can this connect? Need for the organization of thought. Need to express myself in an intelligent way. Meet those needs throught writing. Lots of ideas, but no good unless I can prove it to others. Writing is an instrument to do so.

 [KC7]Free from being judged or evaluated by others.

 [KC8]My own questions. Proving something to myself. Answers and outcomes that were not known ahead of time. Instead of being ordered to go toward a specific conclusion/answer with a paper, writing became a process of figuring out where I was going. Less constricting. Freedom of speech.

 [KC9]More focused on the process then the end result. More time to see all possibilities.

 [KC10]FROM having an answer given to you and being told to regurgitate it TO not having an answer at all.

 Why I Write

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