Why I Write: How Writing and I Came to Be

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.”