My Love/Hate Relationship With Writing

I started writing when I was about ten or eleven years old. I recall attempting to write my own novels, which included at least five to ten chapters about a boy and a girl living in the “hood”, or perpetuating the black stereotypes society usually sees in stories portrayed through movies or text about black romance. The characters would usually be named “Marquis” or “Adrianna”, and there would always be some sort of sexual tension between the pair, which ultimately led to the two protagonists finally sharing a kiss and becoming a couple. As far as the plot, they usually went like this: the girl would be doing something in her house with her younger siblings (making them breakfast, helping them get dressed, and other stereotypical maternal duties); she would usually not have much of a father figure in her life, or parents for the matter; she was usually very independent and therefore didn’t need parents to show her the way; she would go to school and meet her two best friends, one of which would be really sassy and stereotypically “black” while the other was usually very wise and generally the complete opposite; as for the protagonist, she was usually a well-blended mixture of the two. Down the line, she would meet her “Prince Charming” and the stories would usually be left off at the two stuck in their honeymoon phase while blocking out ex-lovers who tried getting in the way of their relationship.

When I wrote these stories, I knew I was in love with writing. So in love that I would lock myself in my room for hours writing the same type of story almost three to four times per week for at least four or five summers. Spending that much time writing in my room made me appreciate writing essays and poetry more, even though I would much rather make up a story about something than write something as short as a haiku.

Not only has my love for writing helped me actually appreciate the process of creating stories, but it has also helped me realize something about myself that I should have realized a long time ago: I’m not as skilled as a writer as I wish to be or think I am. Sure, there have been times when I’ve been very content about the work I had produced. However, most of the time I’ve felt apprehensive about the work I’d written like an essay assignment on the similarities between characters like Prince Hamlet of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Denver of Toni Morrison’s Beloved for example. Even writing an essay on Hazel V. Carby’s Reconstructing Womanhood, which basically described how slave mistresses usually held more power over the plantation than their husbands because they were producing future heirs to the family legacy, served as an obstacle in my writing for me despite me being interested in the subject.

But I want to change that. I want to change how I think and feel about writing as a whole instead of being stronger in some parts more than others. I want to be able to improve myself as a writer by being able to get to the point while also explaining my argument in a manner that is not prolix – ironic because this intro is very long and wordy. I want to also have the ability to connect more with my writing by actually writing because I’m interested in whatever topic I have either chosen or been given to write about, and not just writing because I’m supposed to.

Unlike Pearl Cleage, a Black female playwright, essayist, and journalist, I wasn’t exposed to books by black authors at a young age, nor were any of my family members into literature like Cleage’s parents were; “My mother, my father, and my stepfather all wrote and all wanted to write more than they were able to” (The Word, 100). Moreover, contrary to Cleage, I wasn’t reading books that were even the slightest bit challenging for my age until I was around eleven years old and was four years into attending my alma mater. By then I had been writing essays and analyzing texts like J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. When it came to writing assignents, writing either felt like an easy A or a catastrophic C with the writing time being between 3 days to a week depending on the difficulty of the assignment and if I felt like writing it. As I matured and my writing skills improved, I started facing issues in relation to my writing similar to the challenges John Hope Franklin had with writing about himself. In his interview with Marita Golden in The Word, Franklin reveals “I guess there were challenges, such as trying to be accurate. Trying to be fair” (The Word, 159). In a way, I was trying to make my connections accurate and working towards making my arguments more concise – but it never really seemed to work out as well as I wished. This was especially the case with my analytical essays; for some reason, the points I would be trying to make weren’t as clear-cut as the points my classmates would make in their essays and during class discussions.

However, this wasn’t the case with my creative writing essays. Since there was nothing for me to analyze – unless I was also doing an analysis on a creative writing assignment – all I needed to do was use my imagination and write whatever I wanted while also letting my personality shine through my writing. I believe writing with no boundaries made me more confident and adroit in creative writing than anything else. I just enjoyed writing whatever I felt like writing way more than going by a strict guideline.

But I believe this was also a downside to my writing overall.

I had way too much confidence in creative writing that I didn’t balance out my attention for the standard analytical writing assigned for my classes, which in my opinion, hurt me more than I expected.

So, with that, this semester I would like to work on a couple things; I would like to work on my voice as a writer. Throughout the years, I’ve found that in my writing, I don’t truly sound like myself – as I do here – and even when I do, I still seem to sound generic. Instead of being what my generation would call “basic”, I want to stand out exceptionally as a writer; I want to be able to show the reader who I am not only as a writer, but also as a person. I want them to be able to clearly see my thoughts through my writing in addition to also seeing that I really do enjoy writing and that I’m not writing just for the hell of it. Lastly, I want to work on being more precise in my writing by balancing out the amount of analysis I have for each point I have in my essays – which does not happen a lot in my analytical writing.

In short, this semester, and from this point on, I will no longer restrict myself as a writer; I will say what I need to say, however I need to say it, and will not regret expressing my opinions through putting words on paper. I will be crisp and to the core as a writer and focus more on getting to the point rather than explaining what each and every detail of the evidence is. Finally, I will have my own voice. I want to incorporate more of my personality and thought into my writing instead of just going by the prompt and essentially feeling miserable about my writing. I no longer want to feel reluctant about saying what I feel and instead saying what I know will please my teachers in order to avoid getting a lesser grade than what my assignment deserved. In conclusion, I want my to be a candid writer – someone who doesn’t allow others to get in the way of the writing how they feel in addition to not letting how others think of their writing affect their future work.

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Works Cited

"John Hope Franklin." The Word: Black Writers Talk About the Transformative Power of Reading and Writing. Ed. Marita Golden. New York: Broadway Paperbacks, 2011. 159. Print.

"Pearl Cleage." The Word: Black Writers Talk About the Transformative Power of Reading and Writing. Ed. Marita Golden. New York: Broadway Paperbacks, 2011. 100. Print.