My Life And Love For Writing
My writing life is a doorway to my internal thoughts and emotions. My style varies from academic papers to personal pieces of writing. In both I draw from personal experiences to prove my points as well as reach an emotional peak within audience members. I am an emotional writer. I take the emotional path to prove a point for papers. I don’t write too much outside of school however I occasionally write stories or poetry. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam once said, “poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow” (Abdul Kalam).
My work doesn’t come from my highest happiness. My heart was destroyed after my long-term boyfriend broke up with me, as cliché as that may seem. While at one point I was in his future, for me, he was my future. That was my mistake and it’s my deepest sorrow. I put all my sorrow into my poems to keep myself adrift and survive the rest of the school year. Not all my poetry is about heartbreak, but it appears to be a theme at this point. When I was younger I was a much more logical thinker. A lot of my mindset was “if someone’s done something awful then they’re an awful person. ” I would think about all the things that had occurred throughout my lifetime and not what had happened in the other person’s life. Therefore, I’d take refuge in my diary. I’d write about my father without considering his PTSD and the war he’d been in. I didn’t think about how he’d lost his best friend. To this very day I still continue to write about my thoughts of people or whatever is happening in my life. As I’ve gotten older I have started to think about other people and I wonder what their stories are.
Charles Dickens once said that “there is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart” (Dickens). Reflecting upon two of my diaries as well as thinking about my life, I feel as if the wisdom of my heart has increased. I think less with my head and more with my heart and that shows in my writing, one way or another. While there have been times where I could write an essay in one afternoon there have also been times where I have stared at my notebook or laptop for hours attempting to think up a sentence. There’s a quote from one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman, that simply describes the writing process: “This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy and hard” (Gaiman). I believe it to be extremely true. I’m not a literary genius but my freshman and sophomore year I began to write a book. It was called “My Sister Emily” and it was about the relationship of two siblings and how the sister had passed away and came back as a spirit. It was going rather well, I had a good amount of chapters written despite all of my writing intermissions, however my life became busy and my writing has been on constant hiatus since then.
My Senior year I wrote about how pollution impacts our ocean’s environment. This is because it breaks my heart to see everything that’s happening to the ocean. This example also ties into Kurt Vonnegut’s “How to Write with Style”. Each rule had something interesting. Rule number one stood out to me the most. It says to write about something you care about. I love the ocean and I honestly feel like it’s a part of my soul. Unfortunately, as we live in the dry state of Arizona it’s difficult to squeeze in some beach time. So, when my family moved to England, the very first thing we did was literally run into the water. We went back within our first week of living there. We were there all day and I was the last one there when it transitioned into night and the tide washed away my sandcastle. I also have fond memories with my dad at the beach, and I have few good memories of him so it’s awesome that I have those. It rarely snowed in our town, but it did this one time. I’d never seen proper snow before then and I wanted to walk in it. Sure enough my father told me to get dressed and we headed out. Seeing the snow and feeling the ice cold was a brilliant sensation. Then we got to the beach front and it was simply breath-taking. I don’t think many other people can say they’ve seen the beach engulfed in snow. I love and care about the ocean and those examples are only a handful of why.
Throughout my life I have wanted to go into many areas as a career. I have wanted to be a history teacher as well as a lawyer. Both of those opportunities came into play during my Junior year when my class was doing a debate about Hiroshima and Nagasaki being bombed and whether President Truman should be found guilty or not guilty. As a person, I deeply disagree with what happened in Japan. I don’t think atomic weapons should have been used and I don’t think they should ever be used again. My father has PTSD and my great grandfather on my mother’s side also had PTSD so I’m not fond of the topics about wars, fighting, or weapons. I can only imagine how much worse they would have been if they were ever in a situation like that. However, as a debater I would’ve had much more success proving Truman not guilty. This relates to Paul McHenry Roberts’ “How to Say Nothing in 500 Words”, which had good advice to take the opposite side. Truman had his reasons due to Pearl Harbor, being the president, and protecting his country. Logically, those examples are sound reasons. In my situation, that literally wasn’t my case. I had to prove Truman guilty. I started with reading the sources that were provided to us over and over. What I read was about the witnesses was just heartbreaking. A mother lost her son in the war, a doctor spoke about the long aftermath from the radiation, a scientist knew about the entire project, etc. I did some research as well. In the end it wasn’t enough. All the pain and suffering they had, had been coming. After Pearl Harbor they had it coming. That was the mindset of the “jury” and we, somewhat obviously, lost. Would it have been easier to have the other side? Yes. But would I have thought as much on the other side? Probably not. It’s challenging but it certainly makes you think in another way, from another point of view.
Whenever I get ready to start writing about something I begin to research, I immediately take notes and look for quotes I can use. I always jot down notes and observe the quotes, those are my strengths. However, like everyone else, I have weaknesses. When it comes to writing I have a more emotional point of view than logical and therefore, depending on the subject, I draw from personal experiences to use in my writing. One example that comes to mind was a research essay that I wrote me Junior year. The topic I chose was PTSD. It’s a topic I care deeply about, as it has affected my life. I was able to find an excellent amount of information to use with my note taking skills. I also found quotes that I would support my paper in a logical and scientific light as well as achieve my goal to inform because of how my life has personally been impacted. As a student there are many subconscious thoughts floating in the back of your head that is causing you more stress than you could have realized. What am I going to write about? Where can I find reliable resources? Is this the correct format? Will I get this done on time? Whitehead gives us information as well as a peace of mind. It was also very reassuring. I personally appreciate rule number eleven that says that there are no rules! MLA format was the bane of my existence Senior year and my life, as well as my first grade, would’ve been better if that hadn’t mattered. I got the format wrong on my first proper assignment and because of that it got points marked off. It took me multiple times to get it right and because it was late there were still points I couldn’t make up. If the MLA format hadn’t been a necessity, or a “rule”, I would’ve gotten a better grade and I wouldn’t have felt so much stress. While it’s important to know different formats I feel like the writing wouldn’t have been any different just because of a format. If everything that’s needed is in the paper, then all is well.
Another rule that stood out was rule number three which was to write what you know. Researching, sources and citations are important, but your own knowledge shouldn’t be ignored. There are so many things I’ve read. Even though I may not recall the titles I remember a handful of facts. Those are facts I could’ve used but wasn’t able to because they wouldn’t have had a citation. When I was writing about PTSD I could’ve had the paper done in an hour or so. I know the severity of it, I know the symptoms, and I know how someone can develop it. Therefore, in my opinion no fact should be ignored. If someone remembers something and it’s accurate it should be used even without a source or citation and count towards a grade. No matter what the topic is I’m always going to be an emotional writer. While I also use academic tactics of notes and quotes to keep my work accurate and professional I follow my emotional intuition. It is possible for knowledge and emotion to go hand in hand. It’s a balance of both literary worlds.
