when i write...

When I write, I hope that my words can keep up with the multiple thoughts jumping into my head. When I write, I try to remember why it is that I loved writing when I was younger, and why now I never feel like my words sound good enough, strong enough, or thought out enough.

In 3^rd grade, my teacher pulled me aside one day and demanded that I admit to having plagiarized my book report. I didn’t even know what the word plagiarism meant, but I knew I was in trouble, and I knew I had done nothing wrong. I honestly denied my guilt, but even after a conference with my mother she was not convinced. The writing contained too few mistakes and grammatical errors, and had a ‘voice’ strong enough for a much older student.

In 4^th grade when I turned in my first written assignment, I was not accused of plagiarism. Instead, I was moved into the 5^th grade reading and writing class. When I write, I try to remember what motivated and inspired me to write in the past, and I attempt to bring that feeling back to life again, but I rarely succeed.

At some point during middle school, despite encouragement and enthusiasm from my teachers, writing lost my interest. I went from carrying a journal everywhere, to only picking up a pen when it was mandatory. Then people stopped pushing me to write, so I stopped pushing myself. By the time I realized I missed writing, I felt as if I had fallen out of it completely. The strong writing ‘voice’ my teachers had discussed so frequently, seemed to have been lost amidst everything else, and I never took the time to even rustle some papers around in hopes of finding it.

Suddenly, I want to find it again. During the day, hundreds of thoughts shoot into my head in the form of paragraphs, books, and articles. Unfortunately, they seem to jump out of my head, just as quickly, before I even get the chance to pop off my pen cap. I often wish that I had a voice recorder taped to the inside of my brain, to record every one of these thoughts before they disappeared into the black hole of my head. If that were the case, I would probably have at least 10 novels written by now. I am trying to learn how to catch these sneaky thoughts before they disappear, hoping that one of them will contain my ‘voice’ and lead me back on track.

I never draft or outline as suggested when I write. Instead I try to let my thoughts flow freely onto the paper, ready to be rewritten and edited later. In my mind, writing is like watching a waterfall in action. My hands like the water spilling across the rocky keyboard. Outlining is like creating an obstacle course for something not meant to be contained or controlled. I find it much easier to filter it out once its reached the end, rather than interrupting the flow continuously during the process.

When I write, I grasp onto anything running through my brain, and then attempt to follow it through to the end without stretching it out to far, or letting it get away to soon. I try to let my writing speak for itself, and to let everything I know and am learning, find its place somewhere in the passage.