ON WRITING
I don’t remember learning to read. I know it happened when I was about two or three because I remember my excitement as I read my first “chapter book” at age four. But I don’t remember the first time I sounded out a word, the words from the page connecting to my tongue in what was, unbeknownst to me, one of the most pivotal moments of my young life. I do, however, remember the first time I wrote a story. I was six years old. For a six-year-old, I think the story was surprisingly good: a thrilling 100-word saga of four dogs who get lost in the woods and (narrowly) escape the “bad guy,” with no real explanation as to who the bad guy was or what exactly made him bad. I told everyone I could find about the story I wrote, shoving the wrinkled sheet of paper into their laps with my ink-covered hands.
When I was eight, I wrote another story, the prompt for which was “a time I was scared.” Everyone else wrote half a page. But I turned in an eight page paper about getting lost at Disney World to my second grade teacher. When I was eleven, I started churning out stories late at night, too excited by the fervor writing gave me to care that it was three o’clock in the morning, and I had a busy day of fifth grade ahead of me. At age twelve, I chose a writing class as the beginning of my collegiate career, deciding to ease my way into higher education with something comfortable. I spent several days perfecting my first-ever research paper, obsessively rewriting and revising down to the very last detail. I turned the paper in, terrified and intimidated by the experienced, well-established adults around me. The next week, my instructor returned my paper. I got a 98, which, I supposed, could have been worse. He expressed to us repeatedly that this was only our first paper; our grades would get better, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I had only ever gotten 100% on my papers before.
Then, he told us, he was going to read us an example of what our papers should be. I was excited to learn from someone who was a good writer; I still was not convinced that I was. It took two pages of him reading aloud and me sitting with my eyes closed, feeling the rhythm of the words, before I realized, I wrote this. He was reading my paper. To this day, that moment is still one of the proudest moments of my life because it was the moment when I realized that I was not just a preteen writer who spent an overwhelming amount of time reading in the dark, but a writer. A good writer.
I ended up having two “perfect” papers in that class, but today, my writing still consists of this perfectionist anxiety. Part of me still wants my writing to be perfect,wants everything to be perfect. Now, though, I am more focused on authenticity. On creativity. On selfhood. I am no longer seeking that “perfect” paper, that 100%. Instead, I am focused on learning and growing, so I can become the writer my twelve-year-old self needed to be and my six-year-old self already knew she was. I grow closer to being that writer every time I open up a Word document or pick up my pen, and though I will never be 100%, I eagerly anticipate the never-ending adventure that is trying.
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