My Love of the Written Word

I wrote my very first story in first grade at the age six, I believe it was. It had no depth to it, and it was only about a paragraph long. I was typing on the old Apple IIGS, with the black screen with green text, trying to write my first book - a “book of legends”. They were very short stories about, as an example, how the Zebra got its stripes. How the Panther became black. How the Elephant got its long trunk.

After that the next story I wrote was in third grade for Halloween. Our teacher asked us to write spooky stories. My story was about myself and my best friend Ryan. We were riding our bikes and ended up in an abandoned shack. I’m sure it was just flattery, to boost my third-grade self-esteem, but everybody said they liked it. I recall overhearing my teacher tell my parents that it was the best story any of her students had ever written. Again, that was probably just flattery; for all I know, I wasn’t being too subtle on my eavesdropping.

“If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you.” - Henry Rollins

From then on, however, my love for writing only intensified. While English bored me, I found I was nevertheless good at it. Coming up through the rest of elementary school and middle school I excelled in creative writing assignments. In fact, they seemed to be the only assignments with which I consistently achieved high marks. In high school, while my overall grades in English class fell in the “C” area, my love of writing still increased. Grammar use, spelling and the rules of punctuation came as easy to me as breathing. Because of this, I became restless and increasingly bored in class. While I loved reading, the endless discussion and dissection of required reading ruined the beauty of novels such as “1984,” “Hamlet,” “The Great Gatsby,” “Moby Dick,” and “Siddhartha.” It wasn’t until after graduation that I revisited these brilliant works of art that I appreciated them for the beauty they contained.

To date, the piece of writing that I am most proud of is still the narrative of my life in spring of my Senior year in high school. I was 18-years-old, about to graduate, and in the midst of dealing with the realization that my girlfriend was pregnant, I was going to be a father, and I had a lot of hardships ahead of me. That was the only “A” I received the entire year in English class.

“There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.” - Ernest Hemmingway

Writing, for me, is as vital to my existence as air; without the ability and capacity to write, I would likely lose my mind. Ernest Hemmingway said it best when he said that writing won’t always be easy. There are certainly times when there are so many thoughts and ideas swirling through my head that there’s simply no way to organize those thoughts into anything even partially coherent. Then there are times when the words flow out of my mind, onto paper and screen, with such an ease that I almost feel possessed. Every year when NaNoWriMo comes around, I think, “Maybe this year, I can finish.” But no luck. As with most people, I am my own worst critic. I find myself physically incapable of writing without editing as I go along. My standards for myself are so high that I get frustrated with anything less than my best. That is also why, more times than I like to admit, my blog goes dormant for close to a month at a time. I write a post or two nearly every single day, but they all inevitably get scrapped due to my own criticism and inhibitions. Others have asked me for tips and suggestions on how to write and, as usual, it’s always easier to give the same advice you only wish you could force yourself to follow.

Related posts:

1. 5 Books That Changed My Life: Part 2
2. Friday Feast. Again.
3. Kindergarten: Day One
4. The Orwell Prize
5. Class of 2000?

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