Why I Write

I've never been someone who seeks a lot of attention. I'm the shy girl in the back of the room who likes to wear flowers in her hair and doodle in the margins. I have no great aspirations of fame or fortune, in fact most of my fantasies of the future involve a small cottage in Europe or living in some unknown corner of the coastline. But until then, writing has been my refuge.  I don't know how else to say it besides that whether it's scribbling under my psychology notes or sitting up at 2 AM typing, writing gives me some sort of strength.  Though I've never actively sought power, I do have authority over my words, and that's something that's meant a lot to me my whole life.  

I always found it funny that the first thing I learned to write was my name.  My first story, the only story I could write, was something that was entirely and by definition, me.  But then, after I was given more letters, more rules, more details, I wrote about anything but myself.  I wrote of girls on sailboats, in trees, riding elephants, girls who could see past the stars. And I always thought this was how people wrote. Their writing wasn't supposed to reflect them, it was supposed to tell stories of foreign landscapes and people who lived adventures on the sea and children who could fly out of bedroom windows.  

Then, I met this author in the sixth grade.  I don't even remember her name if I'm being honest.  I just remember this one thing that she said to us that changed my writing forever. ¨Write for the reader out there that is you¨ . That really stuck with me, and it helped me begin to find my purpose in writing. It helped me realize that the only person I needed to write for was myself.  I went full circle, in a way, to when I could only write my name over and over.  But now I can go so much further than that.  Since then I think I've come to know myself better, and that's why I write. To understand the things I can't understand until I've read them, to have written words when spoken ones fail me. So I'm not writing stories of strangers, but I'm not writing my name over and over either.