RACHEL WILSON

BECOMING A WRITER: STARTING A READER

In elementary school, I didn’t really have friends—I had books. I loved spending recesses nestled into a corner, warming up against the heater, sitting on the thin carpet covering the cold cement floor, occupied by the literary adventure of the day. I fondly remember working my way through the entirety of the Nancy Drew series one year—in order, mind you, tracking down missing copies at the local library or waiting for weeks for a copy in another student’s possession in order to guarantee I had the story chronologically correct. (I irritated my school librarian to no end with my patience and persistence on this point.) Eventually coming to be known as a bit of a library mouse, I was always being told my avid passion for reading would make me a great writer. However, I didn’t understand why the passion so evident in the works I had read had yet to manifest in my writing nor did I understand the work required for this manifestation to occur. Each author’s passion breathed life into everything that little library mouse consumed. My current enthusiasm for writing is long fought and hard won; it took me a long time to understand the importance of the balance required to be able to stand on the shoulders of giants, the writers who have come before, in order to see past the horizon. My cultivated passion for writing is wholly dependent on my innate passion for reading.

Reading comes more easily to me than anything else, and early on became a source of solace. I preferred the company of warm, dark, spine-lined shelves to the anxiety-inducing competitions of foursquare on the harsh blacktop. Reading allowed me to become a part of something bigger than myself, to fit in when I couldn’t find a place to fit among my peers. The identity I established as a reader in turn became a source of strength when the going got tough. Each time my mother underwent surgery, the familiarity of turning pages and slipping out of my own shoes into another pair always comforted me in my uncertainty. Each time my social ineptitude alienated me from my classmates, the stories I read provided refuge and a place to learn how best to interact with my environment in the future. Each time I doubted myself, I found examples of brave heroines to look up to in my favorite classics. More than a distraction, books are my tools for both escaping my troubles and learning how to handle them. My innate passion for reading is driven by the emotional connection I established with learning from the characters in the stories to which I escaped.

Standing on the shoulders of giants requires more balance than I had originally imagined necessary, because such balance requires passion. The forced, required writing of my secondary education developed my technical skills, but most of my actual “writing” consisted of memorizing and regurgitating my teacher’s opinions. Particularly detrimental to the development of my zeal for writing was my love affair with insincerity. I developed not an inner passion for writing on subjects that truly interested me, but a fascination with my ability to fabricate slight variations of my teacher’s opinions into essays that brought in desirable grades. These opinions, presented as facts and force-fed in the classroom, were easy to swallow and manipulate without processing, especially with a grade-carrot and promises of a successful future (dependent on performance and grades, of course) dangling in front of my naïve nose. My regurgitations of these opinions were fueled by my desperation to grasp the promises hanging in front of my face, but the whole process was completely devoid of any passion or emotion.

I was not passionate about anything I wrote until the editor’s columns of my senior year, which demanded I develop a personal voice that provided commentary on subjects of my own choosing. These columns were published monthly both online and in print for the high school journalism program. Never before had I held such freedom to speak my mind for such a large audience, and yet never before had I so struggled in order to come up with relevant topics that called forth an inner desire to write. As such, the installments of my column were pitifully wince inducing until I began to use experiences that evoked my emotions as inspiration. The emotions started my wheels turning, and eventually generated fodder for communicating my opinions on social phenomena relevant to my audience, my peers. Through this process, I realized that writing about things I actually cared about took a lot more effort than memorization and regurgitation for a desired grade. I subconsciously drew inspiration from the writing styles of my favorite authors, and modeled my columns after those of the editors that had come before me. Writing for myself requires balancing more delicately on these giant’s shoulders; balance dependent on weaving my opinions into the inter-textual literary web, opinions independent of blind acceptance of the philosophies presented in the authors I read. Most importantly, this balance requires working to develop an emotionally fueled passion for communicating ideas relevant to my experiences and myself.

So I am learning once more how to read, to truly read, in order to understand how to truly write: this time around the process involves much more of my active participation. I look back on the books I truly enjoyed for their engaging nature, and take note of long mornings reflecting on the questions Jane Austen raises in "Pride and Prejudice," of my tear-stained copy of Markus Zusak's "The Book Thief," and of constantly realizing the startling similarities between the current political and social climes and those of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." I am learning to value a book by judging its author’s ability to make me question my opinions and compel me to reinforce my point of view; I also judge myself by my ability to engage in a story and formulate opinions based on the questions the author raises in his or her work.

Developing as a critical reader also means I am developing as a critical writer. No longer is my work a reformat of another’s point of view; I am learning to enjoy presenting my unique point of view in my writing. I use the exercise of forming opinions on another author’s ideas as practice for forming opinions on my interactions with my environment, specifically through the practice of journaling. Writing about my everyday experiences gives me the chance to keep a log of my opinions for future review and inspiration. As a child, reading was an instinctual source of solace and learning; now that I am learning to develop my personal voice, writing is a cultivated method for achieving the same purpose. Rather than being presented with another’s point of view and forming my opinions based on his or hers, I have the option of taking pen to paper and developing an original point of view for personal reflection or for sharing. In turn, this practice has led me to the realization that I am much more opinionated than the little library mouse originally thought she was. These opinions are rarely well-formed or well-built in the beginning, but the process of writing about them and the emotions by which they are evoked allow me to stretch and exercise my newly-formed (and very sore) writing muscles.

My cultivated passion for writing is wholly dependent on my innate passion for reading and this passion’s influence on the development of my personal writing style. As I continue to develop the balance necessary to stand on the shoulders of the writers who have come before me, I continue to learn the importance of reading and writing with a critical eye trained on the authors I read as well as on myself. I continue to draw upon emotion and personal experience to fuel my growing passion from taking pen to paper. The idea of developing my genuine opinions is infinitely more fascinating than any other phenomenon I have ever encountered, and is so much more fulfilling than the insincerity mesmerized me before I discovered the process of cultivating a passion for this process. I owe the enrichment I find through writing completely to the enrichment I first found in reading.