How I Write

The spark often starts with the words of others. There are writers I admire to the point of attempted emulation. Sometimes, their way with words draws me from my writing recluse into a new setting, situation, or style. I’m inspired. I’m excited. My pencil burns into the paper; my words perch haphazardly on little blue lines like fat birds on telephone wires. I love this feeling. I can almost feel my heartbeats blending with the page as I am fed into my work. Sometimes though, this feeling gets me into trouble.

My inner-critic will take this enthusiasm to a whole new level, channeling my admiration into a flood of uncertainty. There’s no way your writing will have the same affect, my inner-critic whispers, your words are clunky in this line, and you’re too wordy here, too sparse there. And I stop. I sit and stare at my page in horrid fascination. I want to write, just like wanting to breathe at the bottom of a lake, but I’m not drowning in water—I’m drowning in doubt.

Cliché as that last line sounds, it’s true. Sometimes little bubbles of inspiration make it through; sometimes I progress through the words, but not with them. I don’t feel the spark then. I can’t. Feeling them would give rise to my inner-critic’s usual snarl. So what if you can feel the words? No one else will. And maybe so, but more and more I find myself writing anyway. I know that I’m weak in areas (if wordiness was a sin, I’d have a one-way ticket to hell) but I also realize that I’ll get better. When I grab a pencil and prop a pad of paper in my lap, I’m at ease. Some music, a few books nearby, and little distraction can help so much. It took a long time to stand up to my inner-critic, and sometimes I still falter under her retorts, but I’m learning.

AP Comp has already inspired me. We’re not jumping through the hoops. We’re taking them and breaking them, tossing aside memorization for contemplation. My inner-critic is having a wonderfully pitiful time standing up against that. The keyboard under my fingers isn’t an instrument of grief anymore either, but a helper. My writing is neither the greatest nor the worst, but it’s me. It’s a learning process. That is how I write.