I know, that sounds odd coming from someone who uses the name “Writr” on just about every internet thing that there is. But for me, creative writing is seriously one of the most challenging and frustrating things for me. And yet I don’t think I will ever stop trying.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Writing academically is a piece of cake for me. Oh, you want that 10-page essay by next week, with sources cited and everything? I’ll have that finished in a day, and it will actually be a good paper, too. No joke. Maybe it’s just because my procrastinating skills in high school forced me to have to write academic papers quickly, but that’s just a skill I happen to have.
But creative writing is difficult. While I’ve been learning to write academic papers since the 7th grade, I haven’t really had much of an opportunity to learn anything about creative writing. I took one class in high school – in which the teacher never liked anything I wrote because it was too “fantastical” – and never had the opportunity to take any creative writing courses in college. And as a result, writing stories takes a really long time.
“Then why keep writing?” someone asks.
Because writing stories is a kind of release for me. I am definitely a daydreamer. My head is filled with all sorts of different stories, made up or not. And so writing helps me…get rid of them, I guess. Helps me so I can focus less on the stories and more on what’s actually in front of me. And even though it is a challenge, it is also really fun. As a few of my friends will tell you, I absolutely love mapping out where a story will go, even if that story never really winds up being written (it’s a bit of a consistent problem, really; I am great at planning the stories, but awful at the execution). So even though I have a hard time writing, and sometimes it does become really frustrating, I doubt I will ever stop. It’s my lifetime goal to get something published, and I’ll be damned if I let my own pig-headedness get in my way.
I’ll admit that I am jealous of authors like J.K. Rowling. Not because she’s fabulously wealthy from writing (though, as a broke college student, that does sound appealing), but because she created one of the most – if not the most – influential stories of my generation. But she didn’t do it sitting in some comfy armchair with a typewriter and a cup of steaming cocoa, no. She did it in a cafe, living off state benefits, at what was probably the lowest point of her life. And yet, here I am, sitting in my comfy air-conditioned bedroom, with ice cream not too far off and not a whole lot of worries just yet, still barely able to write a half-decent short story. I am insanely jealous, and respect her so much for being able to do what she’s done.
So no. Writing might be a challenge for me. It might frustrate me to no end, and in turn frustrate my friends when I complain to them. But I have stories to tell. And until they’ve been put on to a page, one-by-one, I’ll just have to keep typing.
Jacob Ryckman 