Day 54: Why I write…

Growing up I was never the best at anything.  I was always good, but never really good.  So by chance as a sophomore in high school I was enrolled in a freaking art class.  Don’t get me wrong, I love art, but I was no good at it.  The counselor agreed to move me out of it b/c I hadn’t put it as my 2nd or 3rd elective alternative.  The only class available that would make sense for me was Newspaper.  However, I hadn’t taken the Journalism prerequisite class.  My English teacher, though, wrote a recommendation for me saying that she felt I was a good enough writer to surpass the pre-rec.  So thus, I was allowed in Newspaper.

It was then that I realized that I loved writing.  It came so naturally to me.  I was so good that I was even made Editorial Section Editor my junior year..only 1 of 4 juniors who were editors (I really wanted the features section, but I wasn’t complaining.)

This led me on my path to NYU to study Journalism.  There I started to realize how competitive it was.  I was no longer enjoying writing.  Mostly because I had slunk back down into the “good” category and couldn’t compete with the “best.”  So I decided to not become a Journalism major, even though I still took some classes.  I became one of the many who couldn’t figure out what to do and entered the school for individualized study…the same place Mary Kate and Ashley would later decide to dabble in.  So in addition to journalistic writing, I ventured into other areas.  And I’m not talking about fiction writing, but more of the personal narrative writing area.

Then my grandfather was diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer.

Then 9/11 happened and I watched from my bedroom window.

Then my friend Ryan asked me, “Are you writing?”

In the midst of all this tragedy, this one question helped me to really understand myself the best.  “Am I writing?”  At the time I was too shocked…but then I started writing.  I wrote about my 9/11 experiences and sent it to everyone I knew.  And a professor asked if she could publish it with a compilation of other NYU student writings.  (And it is still out there to my surprise…)

Then my 2nd semester of my senior year, I took a class called Writing the Human Experience…or something like that.  I had this crazy professor named Nettie Jones.  Class with her was held all over New York City.  We went downtown to the courthouse to hear the stories of those on trial.  We went to the UN building to hear their stories.  And we even went to her friend’s cocktail party where Reverend Al Sharpton would be to tell us his story.  We also did a lot of writing.  And then the assignment came…tell us about an impactful experience.  I did not write about 9/11.  I chose to write about my grandfather who had passed just months before.

I sat every night in bed, in my pj’s, tucked under the cover, with my laptop.  For a week I wrote and I cried and I wrote and I cried.  All the while I hid behind my closed shades b/c in the dark of night two memorial lights shot up from the ground where the towers once stood.  And I cried and I wrote and I cried.  I had managed to weave an intricate story that started with the day he died, and went back and forth about my childhood memories of him and the death sentence he was given.  When I was done I had typed 20 pages, double spaced, the most I had ever written.  And because I cried so much I had to have someone else proofread it for me b/c I just couldn’t cry any more.  (And still to this day I have not shared this piece of writing with my family b/c I have always been afraid that they too would cry.) 

And then Nettie Jones asked us to submit our best work…if we wanted…to our class’s lit mag.  Only 7 pieces would be chosen.  I submitted, “Don’t Forget to Breathe.”  And everyone in that class had to read it to determine if it was worthy of the publication.  The next class came and a girl (I forgot her name) came right up to me and told me I moved her so much that she cried.  And that’s when I knew why I write.

I write in the hopes to inspire, to motivate, to move, to make laugh…but most importantly I write for me.  Writing is my therapy.  And it seems the most natural that I blog about this new journey I am on.  The ups, the downs, the funnies that all come with being a first time mommy.  And I’m grateful that there are those of you out there that come back day after day to hear another pooping in the bathtub story or another moment I had or to see the cuteness of my sweet Abby.

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