The Importance Of Writing

I’ve been writing forever. I did it all the time when I was a little kid (little, because I technically still am a “kid”); I began with animal-centric fables and eventually graduated to ten-pagers about kids with magical forests behind their houses. Even when I wasn’t writing, I was expressing in that same practiced way; I lectured imaginary audiences while making my bed and brushing my teeth every morning. The internal monologue never stopped, and neither did the laugh track; writing it down was (and still is, to some extent) a party trick. “She’s been reading since four,” my parents told their friends. They still tell it to me today: “You used to make me read you the same Clifford book forty times in a row, until you had all the words memorized.” …show more content…
What does that even mean? When I was three I wore my Cinderella costume every day for a year, and no one’s still harping on that. I think I would have really grown to resent my parents if I didn’t actually love to write. The first story I can remember writing was from when I was four or five. It was one of the aforementioned fable variety, and claimed to answer the question of how people learned to talk. My advanced theory was that long ago a loquacious parrot had flown to all the countries in the world, teaching people how to speak and communicate. I thought it was pretty good at the time, and my mom agreed. From there, I progressed to more complex tales: Nancy Drew-style mysteries, a story about a genetically-engineered talking dog, …show more content…
Diamond (yes, that was his real name). He told me he didn’t want to just discard the poem and asked me if I wanted to make the it into a photo story, a kind of slideshow with music and voice-over. I said yes, and a few weeks later the finished product was posted on our class blog. It met with an overwhelmingly positive response from the parents and relatives of my classmates, but Mr. Diamond thought that it could go further; he had a friend in the navy, and by March of that year my poem had reached the Governor, Jodi Rell, and the director of the US Navy League. I visited the capitol building and was honored in a small ceremony commending me for my “outstanding service” to the US military. I also got a coin from the coast guard; it was very exciting. I find it very ironic now that this piece of work would go on to such success, but at the time it was very important to me. I had always wanted to be a writer (except for that time I wanted to be Cinderella, har har), but before there had been this voice in the back of my head, this worry that I wasn’t good enough. When I think back on this experience I realize that it was when I became sure of my decision. Mr. Diamond was an amazing teacher; without his support I would never have developed such confidence in myself as a writer and as a person. The voice of doubt concerning my