Dear Present me,
Why do you write?
A girl once asked me, “Where do you get the ideas to write your stories?”
I responded with, “I write about the current events that envelop my life and my inspirations.”
That was my answer during my first semester on staff. But prior to becoming a true staff member, I was a junior writer, and during this time my days were spent circling around the challenges of not having enough good ideas to write about.
“Will this bore people?”
“Will this be interesting enough?”
“What if people don’t want to read it?”
These are thoughts originating from a phase I believe every writer goes through. Days get wasted over finding the “perfect” piece to write for a class where stories aren’t yet at the stage of publication.
However, as time went on, and I assembled more stories, the less worried I was about what other people thought. When second semester came around, this worry started to dissolve.
The topics that I wrote about were ones that piqued my curiosity, which, fortunately, attracted my audience to the correct articles.
This didn’t happen because I had already made a list, or had come up with topics on the spot, but instead from the reason I was doing it in the first place: to impact people with a spark of inspiration.
Ideas flowed out of me like a river, words splashed out onto a document like raindrops, and stories started to take off like birds soaring into the air. The fear of not having a topic naturally disintegrated as time went on and I started to keep a running tab of my interests. Soon enough, I had a plethora of ideas waiting to be written.
Whether I wrote about personal experiences, people’s upbringings, or events going on around the school, I was always writing about something. No matter where I found the topic, I always found some level of interest in it, no matter how minuscule.
From the outside, writing may seem like a hobby, but on the inside, it’s a lot more. Writing is the best conclusion to everyday stories, therapy in the way of words, and an endless realm of journalism.
Whether one person read it or 100 people read it, if it was able to help or inspire someone, it was enough; that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do with my writing.
“I totally agree with this!”
“I loved your article.”
“Thanks for including me in this article!”
So, this is why you write,
Sincerely,
Present me
