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A place for Writing 12 students to read each other's writing, to critique, to suggest, to improve.
About Me
- Brad
- Former adult teacher who loves island beaches. Happy homebody and family man; once devoted dog owner, now without Tashi, my Tibetan Terrier. I prefer the absurdity of the imagination to the absurdity of imagining nothing.
12 comments:
this is my short essay on 'why I write' i hope u like it...
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When I first heard the question of ‘why do you write?’ in Writing 12, my most favourite quotation is ‘I write because I want to be someone important, someone respectable’ by James Salter. Perhaps, that is true… Some people write because they want to be an important and respectable people.
If someone asks me “Why do I write?” I now simply answer them, “I write because I want to tell my ‘earlier experience…’” Ever since I survived from the sickness, I pretended so hard not to discover it by someone, and when I say ‘my earlier experience’ to someone, they looked at me puzzled and ignore me as if I have some kind of disease right now.
And so, they don’t know after I was born; I almost died from an unknown fever, and survived and because of it, my family has treated me like ‘a princess.’
And also, because I’m the baby of my family, you can say my family spoiled me lots and when I immigrated to Canada, my family followed me without a question. When I was in high school, I admitted I wasn’t a popular girl, and I guess I didn’t try hard to find one, either. At nights, when I’m about to go to sleep, I held the conversations to myself and to my imaginary friends countless.
It had continued until I almost decided to give up my life because I’ve always dreamed of publishing my own book, and do the glorious stuff, but after the graduation from high school, the dreams swept away and instead of my dreams, the reality kicked in. When the reality kicked in, I felt like a little kid in a swimming pool… drowning, and someone inside the pool was dragging me down. It was so painful.
Some people would say “I write because I want to express myself,” and “I write because I want to be a famous person,” but what about you, Why do you write?
Words: 330.
Why I write?
To be frankly, before today, I never seriously thought why I write. I certainly don’t have the beautiful reasons like other people. I started writing since I started my education and I’m still writing now and probably, I’ll write in future too. I write because is a nature desire from my body, like any physical desires to eat, drink and breathe. I write when I want to write.
My first writing experience would be in elementary school. I had a secret diary. I couldn’t write much with many characters I didn’t know how to write yet. But I recorded my little secrets about mostly something special happened in my life: a charming boy; a new pet; an unsatisfying exam or a nasty teacher. For some reasons I’d like to keep those as my own secrets and didn't want to share with anyone even I was quite a popular girl in school. This diary was latterly destroyed since one day my mom read it and blamed me for “not having healthy thinking”. I cried and tore and burnt them finally. If my mom knew everything, then they weren’t secrets anymore.
My habit of writing diary lasted for years; I even wrote a lot of poems when I was in high school. All those secret writing created a lot of dramas. My husband read my diary again without my permission. When I yelled him why he did that, he told me, “Your writing was damn good, so I couldn’t stop reading it.” Believed or not, I stopped writing anything secret now, I contribute my thoughts into my blog, which is public. The parts which I don't want others to explore, I’ve woven them into fiction. It’s not only about secrets now; it’s pretty wild and wide. Some of my friend told me to think about becoming a serious writer. “I cried a lot after reading your writing.” Those are common comments they left to me. I don't know why they even cried for some political issues. I got a new reader last year—my father who retired as a chief editor. I suddenly got some pressure after knowing that. “You do have some talents.”—I couldn’t believe those came from my father one day when I called my mom and she was absent that day.
Will I continuingly write? Sure! It’s such a pleasure, plus I can write something acceptable in English now. Isn’t something needs to be proud of?! It’s such a good way to block my father when I want, aha! Treat it as a career? I’m not sure. Writing to make a living is too pressed and I don’t believe that people could remain creative if they write under pressure. But if one day, my blog is as long as a roll of toilet paper, maybe I’ll publish them out.
Are those called the reasons for my writing? I don’t know. The only thing is I got great fun in my writing and more and more, I realised it’s very powerful. So if any other people could get tiny little inspiration from my writing, that’s more than enough.
519 words, oops.
Why I Write
Because I don’t have to fit the mold of the standard essay! But yes, I believe it is good discipline to write in a “form,” like using the scaffolding that holds up high rise workers who, moving like caged butterflies, flit about. So, from inside the “cage” of form, I’ll tell you why I write
When writing goes well, there’s no better feeling in the world. It’s like a sunny day. It just is and words stream out of the keyboard as fast as I can type them. Reason enough to have writing days where, at the end of it all, something’s down on paper. The blank page is filled and I look forward to another writing day. Writing, like a river, who wouldn’t love that?
But, that doesn’t mean I don’t have to work things out. The stream of words could be trash, worthy only of the “round file,” to be tossed aside. To write, I have also to be critical, to see my own mistakes, to correct them and move on. Just like my readers, I make the same mistakes again and again and am frustrated. The work is necessary since writing is as much in the throwing out as in the keeping.
Ultimately? There isn’t anything better than publication and hearing from readers. After all the hard writing work, the thought that a number of people will read my words, and, perhaps even remember to say something encouraging, makes all that toil worthwhile. Not easily earned, publication is the final test of a piece’s true worth to the readers.
So, that’s why I write. Like any one, I like to bask in the admiration, but have had to learn the discipline it takes to earn it, and, most of all, I love to have those days writing that make me feel like the first sunshine after many foggy days.
—312 words
Why I Write
I would sit, both hands under my chin, far away from other kids my age because I didn’t fit in their worlds. As a result, I would be in my own imaginary world, where I am a popular, strong, and fearless kid and able to express my feelings. People would call me names and ignore my presence. But I had two friends who I loved.
Paper and pencil were my friends. When I fought with other kids, their parents would defend them, saying I was the starter of the fight or arguments. When I open my mouth to say something, their voices would almost burst my eardrums. What do I do when nobody listened to me? When I was always the one treated unfairly? Then I would jot down all what happen and quote the voices that still echo in my ears. This is my first reason why I write.
George Orwell‘s quote “For minutes at a time this kind of thing would be running through my head:” is my favorite quote because it is similar to my life, my thoughts. The only difference is mine was: She squealed her van to a halt just in time not to crash into the red Jeep. They both hopped out of theirs cars, leaving the doors ajar right in the middle of the intersection and confronted each other. After minutes of calling each other names, they started to walk towards their cars. But they stopped as if a memory had stroked them, whirled round and said, “Wait. a. minute” simultaneously. Even now as an adult, thoughts like these still run in my head.
My final reason I write is that I admire writers when I read theirs books. I hope to be like them one day, and mainly because I feel better when I write down things I am not brave enough to say in a person’s face, fearing I would offend him or her. I write because many things force themselves in my brain at the same time, and I would forget them if I don’t tell my friends, paper and pencil. In conclusion, they keep my memory even if I forget.
361 words
I don’t know I can write until I started the writing class, I always a grade C students in my Chinese literacy class, therefore I believed myself not to have talent in writing. Surprise enough to my parents; I got a grade A in my literacy graduation test in elementary school. The top of that class is “a memorable person in your life”; I wrote about my grandmother. I started to realize whenever I have a passion about something, I can write, or even better, write well.
I don’t know about others, my mind keeps on thinking all the time. Something got in my mind for just a second or sudden fraction of my time; I don’t know what it is. When I write, it is more like to write to myself - I start to put my thought together, and I start to understand who I am, what my heart really desires for. It is like looking yourself in the mirror and your reflection of yourself is staring at you right in your own very eyes.
I love to share my life with others, inviting them into my inner world and experiencing with me together with this world. If nobody wants to join me, my writing could be a piece of art work I have made and I start to indulge in it, I have to admit it, a kind of self indulgence. Just like sometimes, I look at myself in the mirror and wonder how beautiful this person is. Well, give praise to the God to his perfect creation – me and my work.
Writing is more like yoga. It is another exercise to practice concentration. In order to put all my thoughts together, I need to focus my entire mind, forget about all the distraction in my life; it is only between you and your thought. I feel so relaxed after writing. Isn’t that weird! I never feel writing or even studying that way until I have my daughter – distraction expert.
Literature is like any form of arts; it is about power and passion of humanity. As long as I still love my life, I will love to write, to express myself, to be known, to share, to indulge, to admire, to enjoy and to love.
378 words
Why I write? The answer is simple that I am living here. For living in Canada, I have to learn the survival English, including listening, speaking, reading and writing.
While I landing in this strange land, the new continent for me, I am a dumb and blind for I am no English. Learning English become to be the most essential thing, the first need in my life.
Then, I can do something such as banking, shopping or fill the taxi forms, but I still can’t write a letter even a short note. Once a time, my neihbours made too much noise for a long time, and the high decibel of the sound almost made my ear hurt. I decided to report to the manager for complain, but I lacked of the ability to describe it. That made me very annoyed.
I go to Adult Learning Centre to improve my writing. To my surprised I found while I write fast in a short time period, there are no enough words to describe my feeling and the event, nor enough sentence patterns to make my essay more attractive. It’s so insipid that made the reading likes chewing wax. That is the real level in English.
Then I begin to read newspaper, books and watch TV. Like an illiberal, I understand a little, but I insist doing it. Eventually, the clouds break a crack, and I saw a gleam of the sun light and a patch of the blue sky. The chrysilid is hatching. It is evolution step by step.
It’s still a long way to go for this process of hatching. Nourishing from the books and epigrams, some progresses are made. Interest is growing. Through appreciating the good sentences, I’m happy to feel a sense of affinity of English comes into my mind. The feeling is so good.
At the same time, making-mistakes are never stopped. The same mistakes repeated again and again. It seems to do it knowingly and deliberately despite repeated admonitions from my teacher. Sometimes that makes me desperation. However I insist writing, and writing makes me progress.
Through writing I find out the deficiency and the gap. Through writing I gain the progress and raise the interest in English. I hope I could express my thinking and my feeling more precisely without too difficult one day in future—the chrylisid becomes a butterfly. At least, the writings are accepted by myself--the first reader.
Words: 406
Why I write?
I write because I think there are many important things happening in the life that are worthy to write about them. I have many experiences in the life, and I want to share them with others. This gives me a sense of being important, the sense of being alive. One day, my master in the university, a famous Iranian play writer, Khosrove Hakim Rabet, told me I have this privilege to live, to experience the meaning of life, to live in full. He experienced World War 2, the prisons of Shah, being one of the first youth to go for the first youth congress of the Communists in the world, being beloved by people, being tortured, being the university’s professor, seeing the two revolutions in Iran, the war between Iraq and Iran, and being meanwhile a successful husband and father to raise educated and intellectual children. Yes, he lives. I am not as old as him, he is older than my 72 years old father, but I have this privilege to live, to experience, and to write about my experiences.
Why I write?
I write since I knew myself. I was in grade four when I wrote my first fiction story. It was likely a fairy tale with some political wishes for equity among people. It was one year before revolution. I grew up in a political family. They always have their own voice. My grandfather from my mother side was an unpublished writer. The life didn’t let him to publish his book. He died at the age of thirty-two.
My mother and father, both, had their diary books even my father isn’t a good writer as my mom is. I grew also in an ancient family. From my dad’s side they had court calligraphers that even now you could find their art works in the museums, and famous merchants during the Silk Road age, and some philosophers and Sophists. From my mother side we have more than a hundred and eighty patriarchs, bishops, priests and deacons from the ancient Assyrian Church and the Assyrian Chaldean Catholic Church, writers and revolutionaries who sacrificed their lives for their ideas, and even counterfeiter of bank-notes.
I grew with those true stories. My mind is full of them. My descendants have been totally venturous people. The first Iranian who visited United States was my great grandfather from my mother side. I believe all their ventures and experiences live in my soul plus the history of the Middle East because I belong to the most ancient civilised people in the Middle East: Assyrians, Persians, Elamites, and Jewish people. I always have a story to tell.
Also, I write because I have different experiences from ordinary people. Sometimes, I feel I journey in the time and the place. The physical time and place could not stop me from being in another place and time. These journeys made me a different person. Sometimes, the actions of my deeds seem to me strange, slowing down their pace or being done by another hand. I asked many people about these experiences and found out that those are rare, yet not unique because I found them during reading from the great writers. I am physically somewhere then I find myself in a different place just in my imagination not in the real world. Those journeys comfort me. I can escape from ordinary, boring situations. When your imagination is too strong, then you are certainly an artist, a born to be an artist. I like to use this privilege in the writing process. The writing gives them a sense, a meaning for my experiences. Also I play theatre to experience being someone else.
Lastly, I write because I think there are many important things happening in the life that are worthy to write about them. I have many experiences in the life, and I want to share them with others. This gives me a sense of being important, the sense of being alive. One day, my master in the university, a famous Iranian play writer, Khosro Hakim Rabet, told me: “I have this privilege to live, to experience the meaning of life, to live in full.” He experienced World War Second, two revolutions in Iran, the war between Iraq and Iran, the prisons of Shah, being tortured as a communist, being one of the first youth going to the first congress of youth communist in the world, beloved by people and a university professor, and meanwhile being a successful husband and father of four intellectual children. Yes, he lives. I am not as old as he. He is older than my seventy-two years old dad, but I also have this privilege to live, to experience, and have the ability to write about my experiences. (609 words)
I started to enjoy writing since I was in secondary school. Before that, I didn’t like writing, or I could say , I hated it. I remember when I was in grade three in elementary school, my teacher let us write diary and must to hand it in every day. For a nine- year- old kid, who spend most time studying and had not many thoughts in the mind, it was hard to find something special to write them down. Therefore, due to finish the assignment, I had to make up stories-I helped a classmate complete his homework, or I found a wallet on my way home and gave it to the police. Making those kinds of stories every day made me tired. So writing at one time drove me crazy at the thought.
The thing changed as I grew up and became a teenager. Except for studying from books , my eyes began to observe the surroundings and my mind was filled with many thoughts and feelings. Writing them down was a good way to save them. . If I wanted to , I shared them with others, but most of time, I preferred to relish those by myself. Writing, as an indispensable, added a lot of color to my life.
Even now, I still stick to writing ,but the difference is that what I write is in English. Insufficient vocabularies and lacking variety of sentence structures all make my writing lose its quality. Writing in English, I admit, is far less I write in my mother language. However, while I keep writing, I can find my progress in every piece of work.. I am happy with that. Writing changes into challenge, and pleasure, at the same time.
I will keep writing, keep using pen to write rhymes and phrase from the soil of my heart.
Why I write?
Realistically I have not thought deeply on the reasons for me writing. When I was in my younger teen years I used to keep a diary of my thoughts stored up for future reference. It was very helpful at times but also frustrating during certain situations. Reasoning behind why it could become a nuisance was hard for even me to understand during those impressionable years, full of angst. As I slowly transitioned from being a boy, to a young man, certain things became more clear to me.
First of all I wrote to let out some of the anger I may have been feeling at the time. Instead of taking my frustrations out on other people, I would grab a pen and paper. I was raised with strong morals and beliefs. In turn I had guidance for how to deal with certain emotions and feelings for the better interest of myself, and everyone around me. Venting out my dilemma on paper helped me cope with a lot of the drama involved with teenage hood.
Second of all I took to writing to expand my imagination and have debates with myself. I would discuss why I thought the way I did on certain subjects. Being openly social was not a big thing for me until I was around 18 years of age. Keeping to myself was what I was mostly comfortable with. Of course I had a few close friends that I would constantly talk with about things, but nothing as intimate as the thoughts shared on paper with myself.
Thirdly it was used to escape. Although I was raised with strong values, my upbringing was anything but easy. My family was dysfunctional at best, and at times it was completely unbearable. So the best way for me to 'run and hide' was to write my heart out. Not always because I was necessarily angry or frustrated. It could have been simply confusion and a lack of knowledge of the situation at hand. But it was the best way for me to cope, whatever the circumstance.
All in all, writing has been a form of expression I have used most of my life to help me through things. Whatever the emotion I could be feeling at a given time, all of it can be put into words. It doesn't matter where I am, who I'm with, or why I'm doing it. Writing is my coping mechanism.
"Just like sometimes, I look at myself in the mirror and wonder how beautiful this person is. "
----This is more than enought to kill me, Eve!!!
People write for different purposes. Its may be personal or may be for others to read. Me? I haven't asked myself why I write or to whom do I write for. I will try to answer those questions in this piece of writing and it is up to you to justify what the answers are.
I remember a friend back in the Philippines. His name was Jacob. He grew up in a Religious family, they attend the Sunday Mass regularly and every member of his family knows how to recite the rosary. They follow the sacraments such as communion. They were Pro-Life which means they are against contraceptives and abortion. His family is a great example of a Catholic Family. But, deep inside Jacob was a feeling of being different. He knows that God only created Men and Women- Jacob was in between. He had always felt different since he was a young boy, he was not interested in playing wrestling with his older brothers but rather liked curling the hair and painting the nails of his younger sister, but Jacob kept all this from the rest of his family. But as the old saying goes, even the best kept secret is meant to be revealed. When he was in high school, he started dating with the same gender. He practised sexual exercises with his male partner. He was good at keeping his real identity behind his buffed chest, six-packed abs and muscles, not until he was caught by his father kissing a man in their backyard. His father was disgusted at what he had found out and hurt Jacob , he hit him with a baseball bat at any part of his body before sending Jacob away. At the age of sixteen, Jacob was forced to live in the harsh street of Manila, were people like him are not greatly appreciated. With not a single cent on his pocket, few clothes inside his bag, his most precious belonging is his diary. Jacob wrote everything in his diary. All the emotional and physical pain, the sufferings, his happy moments were all written in it. Before we departed our ways, for we had different purpose in life, he handed me his diary as a sign of our short but meaningful friendship. He wrote his life in a notebook, and it is my job to share parts of it to others, for Jacob had written, “My life is nothing if it won’t touch others.” Jacob touched my life, and to pay tribute to our friendship , I write.
Adapting a different culture and environment far from what you were used to, like speaking the language you never use, a language which is far more complicated than your native tongue. Speaking to someone a front is very hard if you are not very fluent. There are the confidence issues. If you don’t know the exact words to say, there is big chance of misunderstanding, or if you don’t speak the language clearly, they might laugh at you and think of you as a lower person. But in writing, you wouldn’t have to worry about all of that, you can write even in a complete gibberish outline and still feel satisfied, and confident.
For one reason, because what you write represent yourself, or the people and things that you want to be represented. It doesn’t matter if other people find your writing non-sense as long you fill those empty spaces between your world and their world, your words and their’s. And to connect my past to my future, I write.
Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist once said that if food satisfies our hunger, dreams nourishes our soul. I strongly agree with him. What is a man without a dream? A Zombie? A Robot? A Mannequin?
Since I was a young boy, I’ve always wanted to be a Teacher. Not just an ordinary Teacher, I want to a Mobile-Teacher. A Mobile-Teacher is a teacher that goes into the secluded parts of the Philippines and search for out-of-school youths, and indigenous tribes to teach them in their houses, in a park or it can under a tree. I am far from my dream but I wont stop dreaming. And to not forget about what I want and all my dreams, I write
Some people say that some feelings are hard to express, some words are better left unsaid and that some secrets are meant to be kept hidden, but, keeping all those feelings, words and secrets inside one’s mind and heart can deeply torment a human soul and/or severely affect our daily living and worst, the lives of the people we love. And to avoid punishing my self, my love ones and/or the people that I do not personally know or have met, even unknowingly, to prevent hurting anyone, I write.
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