This week in class we were instructed to read three articles by three different authors on why they write. Our choices were from George Orwell’s “Why I write”, Joan Didion’s “Why I write”, and Eudora Welty’s “The making of a writer: Listening in the dark”. Upon our teachers advice I chose from Joan Didion’s why I write. She expresses why she writes as a free exercise. She’s informal, somewhat of a creative writer. She states she’s not as you would say “intellectual” and bases her writing on images in her mind. Joan also states that writing is a way to get people to see her way, and her perspective on certain subjects.
The reason I chose Joan’s piece is because it reminds me of the way I write. For instance writing about a certain event that has taken place in your life. From your own perspective you can share where you were at that time, how it made you feel, what details you saw that maybe other people didn’t, and the impact that event had on your life afterwards. Early on in life I was only writing because I was told to. I hated writing research papers and essays. But as I got older I found myself writing for pleasure. I had a journal and every significant event that happened in my life I wrote down. It was somewhat of a therapy.
I kept one particular journal of the summer of my Junior year of high school. I wrote in the book every night I got home. That summer had a big impact on me. I had lost multiple friends, it was my first summer of really partying, sneaking out, getting in trouble. I had a lot of ups and downs during those months. Eventually when the summer ended I turned it into somewhat of a book, broke it down into chapters, elaborated here an there on some events. I still have it to this day. I look back it all the time to remember all the things that have happened and how far I’ve come since then.