Tending to the Fire

“I hate writing; I love having written,” - Dorothy Parker

When I fell in love with reading as a kid, I had an overwhelming appreciation for books’ ability to take me to new worlds. Ones with fire-breathing dragons, magical spells, and time-traveling tree houses. Soon after, I began writing myself, and discovered that I held the ability to create my very own worlds right in my very hands.

I remember begging my fifth grade English teacher for extra writing assignments to do in my free time. She used to say that I had a very distinct voice in my writing. At just ten years old, I believed I had already found my future career, one that was inexplicably enjoyable and came extremely naturally to me. I find myself wishing now, as a senior in college, that writing could have stayed as easy for me as it was in those days. Even a deep love for reading and writing does not guarantee you a simplistic or struggle-free relationship with it.

Through my middle school years, the reading and writing flame remained strong and stable. For the first time in my young life, I felt that other kids could be very cruel, and had a hard time expanding my previously tight-knit group of friends. Instead, I found friends in the characters of my favorite books and created them within my own writing. To me, it felt like I had a permanent security net below me at all times to catch me if I fell.

Things began to change in high school, where I wrote essay after essay about things like the Civil War, or climate change, or political disputes. I eventually stopped writing for myself, and only wrote when I was instructed to by my teachers about topics I had no say over. The magic was all gone. By graduation, I was burnt out, and desperate to understand why something that I loved so much was so difficult for me now. It wasn't that I didn't care about these topics, but I learned that the flame began to fizzle out when I was required to write about something that I was not personally choosing to explore.

When my freshman year of college rolled around, I felt completely directionless. I was uninspired, and could hardly even get myself to continue writing in my journal that I consistently kept up on for as long as I could remember. My major remained undeclared throughout my sophomore year, as I continued on in a state of constant internal conflict regarding my path in life. I had spent so much time and energy on my writing that I wasn't sure if I was any good at anything but writing, or at least good enough at anything else that was worthy of making a career out of.

As my sophomore year came to an end, I declared my major as Creative Writing out of default, and crossed my fingers in hopes that I could somehow reignite the delicate flame that was my relationship with writing. I started reading a lot and began learning and writing about authors, from William Shakespeare to Henry James. I threw myself beyond my comfort zone, writing poems, screenplays, and grants.

Once I started getting feedback from my professors, I felt the faint flickering of the flame that I had been searching for begin to return to me. Their extensive and knowledgeable comments reassured me of what I knew, but had begun to doubt; I was doing what I loved to do, and I was good at it. It wasn't until then that I realized a love for the craft does not automatically equal consistency or ease. As I worked alongside my classmates and fellow writing majors, I found that I wasn't the only one who experiences strains on their relationship with writing. I felt less alone in my precarious position with the process.

Writing once again felt like it did for me in those first days: a safe and comfortable place I had neglected to visit for a while. While my relationship to reading and writing has evolved, my love for it still exists today; it is just much more complex. Being patient with myself is the most essential part of the art, because the reality is that it will not always feel like a natural practice. It can feel messy, and frightening, and completely foreign at times.

Luckily, this doesn't mean that your flame has been stifled indefinitely; it only means that you must fan it for a while, and give it some room to breathe. If you nurture it, and allow it to take on new forms, it will inevitably return to you in all of its glowing glory. Creativity is not linear, and love will never equal ease.