To Write for Yourself
Alayna Chen
Reading fantasy from an early age taught me that eleventh and sixteenth birthdays contain more possibility for magic than any other day. If you haven’t been whisked off to some distant realm to take back your kingdom on those special days, your chances of discovering your magical heritage are extremely low. There is just something special about those ages that unlock new adventures that have the power to change the rest of your life.
By the time my eleventh birthday came around, I, like the rest of humanity, had come to the unfortunate realization that I was, in fact, not destined to fulfill a prophecy and bring hope to a devastated mythical land. Instead of accepting this fact and moving on the way most people do, I started to come up with fantasy stories of my own. Admittedly, they were awful. None of them went anywhere or really made any sense. Still, these plot lines and characters that lived in my head became the characters and adventures that I day dreamed about when I wasn’t paying attention in class the way I should have been.
In seventh grade, my teacher told us to write a short story. It could be about anything. The only real guideline we had was that it should end up being around five pages. Naturally, I decided to tap into my endless knowledge of fantasy and write about a girl who had random powers. It would be great! Everyone would love it!
It ended up being an eighteen page monstrosity that I didn’t let anyone, aside from those who had to, read because I was so disappointed that it had actually come out of my brain. Every peer review session we had in class only made the story longer rather than shorter like I had hoped. There was always something missing, something that didn’t quite make sense without a lengthy explanation. Only a quarter of the way through, I realized I was far past the five page limit, resulting in a significant imbalance when it came to the length of the beginning and ending.
And yet I was still somehow proud of it at the same time. It was possibly the first time I realized how much I actually care about what I write. I wanted all of those details because it made me feel like I had accomplished something. There’s a saying about killing your darlings that I have never understood until that moment. I knew I had written words and phrases that didn’t need to be in that story. Even with the page limit miles behind me and the mounting feeling of failure, I couldn’t get rid of the words once they were there because I was the one who had thought of them. They were mine, and they were precious. They really were my darlings, and the part of me that loved them was bigger than the part that hated them.
In this world, being “successful” means proving yourself to everyone else. Making them believe that you can do well and that you’re worth supporting. I didn’t realize it then, but I wasn’t actually writing for the grade like I should have. I wasn’t focusing on getting the A, on proving that I could write creatively the way I could write academically. No, I wrote that awful seventh grade story for myself. The part of me that is a creator, not the part that is a student. It was an excuse, a push, to write that I didn’t know I needed. When it comes to writing, I’ve always had a hard time getting started. The motivation just isn’t there, especially when it comes to creative writing, which some people would call a waste of time. School never helped me either. There's hardly ever the chance to tell a story that isn’t a narrative, and the sheer amount of essays and analysis writings about things I don’t care about often make me lose my excitement for writing rather than feeding it.
I still find it hard to write on my own time. I don’t always get to see the thoughts in my head and the stories I dream of become black letters against a white background, but I know that it’s important to write because I want to. I force myself to sit down and write down at least the bare skeleton of my stories so that they’ll be there when I’m ready to really dive in and write. Practice makes perfect. I’m nowhere near there yet, but I’m trying. I’m trying to write, and I’m trying to be proud of my capabilities. And one day, I’ll get there. I’ll write a story that is all my own that means something. One I can be proud of.
