On Writing

Prompt: What does writing mean to you? Does writing come easy for you?

When I was young, I was determined to be a famous author.  I was going to write a series a million times more popular than the Harry Potter books.  I was always ahead of my class when it came to English and Writing classes and could write anything in any form my teachers asked me to write.  Somewhere along the line, however, I was told that writing was not something I could make a career out of.  I had adults telling me to look for something more practical if I wanted to have a career when I grew up.  I was smart, so there was no reason for me to keep focusing on my creative abilities when I could easily be a great accountant or lawyer.  These voices of doubt eventually pushed me to give up my dream of being that super famous author, but they never could fully convince me to give up on writing personal works for myself.

Writing has always been the best way for me to express how I really feel, especially when I couldn’t find the courage to say it aloud.  As someone who has struggled with mental health issues, writing has also served as an outlet during times in my life when I was so filled with emotions and thoughts that I felt I would fall apart at any moment.  When writing for these purposes, I would throw everything I knew out the window and just let the words flow.  I would intentionally ignore punctuation and fill an entire page with run-on sentences, excessive metaphors, and exaggerated descriptions until I felt I had calmed down enough to once again think rationally.  I still love writing prose, poetry, or narratives with correct punctuation as well, but the rawest pieces always seemed to come from my personal therapy sessions in the form of that wild and reckless style of writing.