“An audience is always warming but it must never be
necessary to your work.”
- Gertrude Stein
When I was a kid and it came time to
say good-bye to my imaginary friends and look for a more socially acceptable
way to “pretend,” I turned to writing my own stories. My earliest memories have
me with a book, my imagination running wild. When reading a good book before
bed at night, “Just one more chapter…” turned into a finished book at 4am. All
those books made me have a running narrative in my head almost all the time,
and those running narratives quickly turned into stories. I would lie on my bedroom floor and pen
stories for days. I loved it – using my own imagination to create the world as
I saw it – telling life through my eyes. I always wrote independently, weaving
intricate layers together. I soon learned that I could transfer this skill and
love of the written word to school, and my essays received high marks. Though
writing for school was slightly different; I loved using my writing to prove a
point. I knew that how forever long my essay was, I had an audience, and it was
my personal agenda to move that audience to thinking about my words, agreeing with my point.
This (albeit narcissistic) idea is still something I carry with me today when I
write essays or when I write for class.
But at some point in high school I
was encouraged to take creative writing classes and continued to pursue that
passion in college, declaring a Communications major and Writing minor. I
explored the depths of writing, dabbling in journalism, non-fiction, personal
essays, commercials, ad copy, and screenplays. Each genre proved to be a new
challenge, and through these various mediums I learned the value of good
editing and revising – something that today I consider to be a gift and a
curse. I am lucky to now have these writings as snapshots of my past as I grew,
changed, and evolved throughout my years of college.
But somewhere along the way, (I deny
being able to pinpoint a specific occurrence, but we all know it has to do with
a bad relationship, a boss who I swear wanted to see me regress instead of
progress, and let’s face it, horrible self-esteem) I began to stifle my own
voice. I would sit and stare at a blank page, unable to begin a piece, almost
as if I was too afraid at what would fill the page. I even began to restrict my
personal writing so much that I stopped altogether. Writing was no longer
enjoyable because I became too harsh a critic. I began to want to label things,
for every piece to have a purpose, for every word to carry too much weight,
embarrassed at my own inner-narrative.
It wasn’t until I made a difficult
and conscious decision to start a…. I almost cringe at the word…a blog…to
remedy my writers block. It has a small following, (I had to make it my mom’s
homepage so she would even read it) but that doesn’t matter to me. I write for
no one but myself. Yes, a lot of the time even the blog is censored but I have
also begun to write more privately as well. One day, I’ll be glad I wrote the
blogs, when I look back and am reminded of who I was when I was 25. This type
of writing has begun to open up doors to other parts of my subconscious as
well.
As an English teacher, writing is
crucial. Being able to unlock my own inner-narrative will help me encourage my
students to do the same. Realizing that I have my own voice, will help me
enable my students to acknowledge that they have a voice that deserves to be
heard as well. Great writing is honest. It transforms the writer so who they
are after the piece is written is slightly different than the person they were
before. Great writing establishes a
connection between the writer and the reader. And if I can experience that
connection with at least one of my students, I’ll have achieved a level of
success that no other profession offers. No, maybe I will not become a famous
author, as I thought when I was young, but each year, come September, I will
have a new narrative to pen.
