My Writing, Recently
Hey guys, welcome back! Recently I've been doing a lot of reading and writing of something that I've never ever been interested in. This is because my dad is treating me like one of his sophomore students this year, and is doing the same things for them as 8th grade homeschooled me. That means I'm dealing a ton with narratives. Hooray.
I've never really liked personal narratives, because I always associate them with 3rd grade when we all wrote cheesy little stories and made a book out of them. I don't particularly want to remember that. However, I have finally come to the realization that I should have a long time ago that personal narratives are so much more than a retelling of a story that happened to you; it's much bigger than that. It's a story, but it has meaning and depth behind it.
My dad is really great at finding both my strengths and things I need to work on. That's a great thing to be able to do - and it's easier for him because I am a lot like him in how I write. He has noticed that one of my not favorite things to do is dealing with narratives, so he's had me read several narratives, and yesterday, write one. Not just a "we went to California and the beach and we had fun," but something so much deeper than that. I've been reading a lot of narratives, including "I Find Fool Gold," "Once Again to the Lake," "Transfiguration," and "A Hundred Thousand Straightened Nails." I have actually begun to like and appreciate narratives.
So yesterday after Algebra class, I had some time, and my dad challenged me to write a narrative of my own. At first I couldn't figure out what to write about, then I couldn't decide how to start; but finally I got an idea, stuck with it, and so wrote a little narrative for my dad. I'll paste that down below.
But also, before you read, I've been thinking about what it means to be a writer. As the quote above states, Annie Dillard believes that one must give one's life to be a writer; I don't fully agree, as is with much of her sentiments and statements about humanity/life/that kind of thing, but part of me thinks that maybe this is somewhat true. That part of me is quickly squashed by common sense, because I don't have to be completely 100% devoting every bit of myself to being a writer. I want to be other things, too. I can possibly give 25% of my life to being a writer, and I think that's good enough.
Speaking of good enough, sometimes I feel that my writing itself will never be good enough. I think to myself in quiet, sleepless nights that I will never be able to get to my goal of being a semi-famous writer. But one thought that has been stalking me is this: my gift won't be special unless I make it. And unless God helps me, but I've been mostly thinking of how much work that it will take, and I've finally decided that I will do it. I'll take the work. I'll pursue this little dream of mine and see just how far it can go.
I tried copying and pasting, and that didn't work. Email me here if you want me to send you the narrative! SO sO SO SO sorry!!!!!
What do you guys most enjoy writing?
