I’m the only child of two highly educated parents, so you can imagine I spent a lot of time around adults when I was growing up. Well, adults, books, and imaginary friends. It wasn’t that I didn’t have any friends my own age, it was just that there was so much to be made up, so much to be read, so much to be discovered. I developed quite the precocious little vocabulary from listening to all of that adult conversation and reading all of those books, but I was embarrassed of it. In school I would think one word, then I would take a beat, and speak another, a dumbed-down synonym of what I had originally thought. I didn’t want to give anyone cause to think I was weird or to make fun of me.
That’s why I write.
Because when I write I own the words, and I can use the ones I want.
this year’s notebook and my current favorite pen
At swim meets people used to tell each other, “You did good!” and ask, “Did you swim good?” And so I said those things, too, because heaven forbid I say the correct “You did well!” and ask if they had swum well. (I’m pretty sure I even blapshemed grammar by saying I “had swam” because people looked at me askance when I tried the correct “swum.”)
That’s why I write.
Because I know the rules, and I love the rules, and I also love taking little liberties with those rules because when I write, I own the rules, and I can use the ones I want.
I always kept a journal as a kid, though intermittently, and I of course made little construction paper books. My most famous chronicled the course of the Olympic torch through Jackson, MS on its way to Atlanta in 1996. I also have a vivid memory of a page in my journal years later where I drew a special box, inside of which I exclaimed something along the lines of “OMG Matt Damon. So hawt.” (I had just watched Good Will Hunting.) I probably would have tweeted that thought if it were today, and I would have made connections with other people who also think Matt Damon is so hawt.
That’s why I write.
Because I care about building community, and when I write, I own the words, and I can use the ones I want to share myself & invite people into my story.
I write because sometimes the words in my own head are so loud that I can’t read anyone else’s until I get them out.
I write because the world is a broken place but I see beautiful things in it, and it’s my heart to point those out.
I write to make the corners of the world I touch a little softer.
That’s why I write.
Because I’m a keen observer, and an over-thinker, and when I write, I own the words, and I can bring into light what you might have missed otherwise.
I write because I can. I write because I can’t help it. That’s why I write.
