Today is National Day on Writing. As I look at the Twitter posts, read the articles and tweet my reason to the hashtag #whyiwrite, I think back reminiscing about my journey. I remember why I wanted to be a writer and why, after all this time, I still rely on it as an old friend I refuse to let go. So, today I'm going to tell you the story of how writing and I came to be.

I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't write.  I still recall being a kid in elementary school jotting down rhyming limericks in my pink fuzzy diary because I thought all poems had to rhyme and even though I didn’t know it yet, it was the start of the most important friendship of my life.  Then I got my hands on Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy and I was done for.  Reading about Harriet and her desire to be a famous author made me realize that my words on paper weren’t just a dumb pipe dream of a 10 year old with big glasses and frizzy hair.  This book made me realize that I too wanted to be an author, that I too wanted to write everything I knew and everything I saw and thus was the official start of my writing life.

It always stuck with me.  No matter what I did or who I was, writing was a loyal friend with arms stretched open waiting for me to embrace it.  I tried different things and experimented with different talents, but in the end writing was what I was meant to do.  For a time in high school as I was applying to colleges, I began to think that maybe I could try my hand at acting.  I applied to Emerson as a theater major selecting writing as a back-up in case I didn’t get into the program.  I guess the universe knew better.  Writing was what I went in for and I never looked back.

I found my writing self at Emerson.  I fell in love with the first children’s writing course I took and I knew that was going to be my genre.  As I progressed through my college years, writing never let me down.  It stood by me at 4am as I was cramming the last few words onto my 15 page paper.  It handed me tissues as I cried over whatever boy broke my heart and it picked me up when depression hit me hard.  For almost two years, I lost myself.  I didn’t know who I was anymore and as I struggled to find myself again, writing was my security blanket.  I knew who I was when I had a paper and pen in my hand and as long as I had my writing, I would never be lost.  It was then that I knew we were soul mates. 

I don’t write for the glory of it.  Even if I never become that famous author that Harriet wanted to be, I know I am happy with my writing.  As I said in my Twitter post, “I write because it's who I am and to do otherwise would feel really strange.”

I'm not sure if I have much to say at this point.  I'm liking the story and am moving along it quickly, I'm just having a bit of the "I've read this kind of story" feeling.  I feel like dystopian stories are getting to the point where vampires and werewolves are already at, over done.  I'm reading this story going "Ok, we have another dictatorship society where rules are governed to the populaces and now one teen is about to break the rules and possibly bring the society back to where the people can run their own lives."  Sounds familiar, right?  I can almost picture what the end of the series is going to bring.

I don't know.  Like I said, I'm liking the story and I can relate to the characters and what they feel and want.  I'm just hoping something new is presented.

The girls of my book club had just about the same feelings as I did about this book.  We all liked it, but we all wanted more from it.  It seemed kind of simply done and we felt that the author had room to play with and didn't.

Our next book: Matched by Ally Condie.  We've been waiting to read this book until it came out in paperback and now it's here.  No date yet, but watch for my progress.