passion for writing

By Kayla B

When I was younger, I hated writing. I loved to read, but being forced to write essays on things I wasn’t interested in proved to be a drag. I definitely wasn’t born a writer.

As a kid, writing is one of those things you associate with homework, so I thought it was boring and couldn’t be fun for me. But when I was invited to be fully creative for the first time, I saw the appeal of writing.

As I said before, I loved to read. You wouldn’t be disrupted by a teacher if your head was in a book and classics like Big Nate and Diary of a Wimpy Kid put me into the habit of reading. I ended up moving on to even more books after that. But what does that have to do with writing?

When we started learning narrative writing again in elementary school, I was given very few instructions: write a 500-word horror story. Being inspired by things I’ve already read, I wanted to write the fanciest, longest horror story ever.

Looking back, I still kind of laugh about it. It wasn't very good. I used longer, less commonly used words to impress my teacher. Each paragraph was a giant brick of words, which also included dialogue. The story was kind of all over the place but at the time, I was really proud of it.

It can definitely be described as trying way too hard. I made the letters smaller and fancier as a result. If I had to review the story I wrote when I was younger, I would be so annoyed. Despite all its flaws, the teacher loved it. Obviously, that was also the same day I learned that you had to start a new paragraph every new speaker. Oops.

In writing, you choose every word and get every freedom to write what you want. Writing is one of those things you can use to express yourself and your ideas. Writing is also one of those things that can bring people together.

Meeting people who write is like a constant back and forth of energy and excitement. Even people who weren’t huge on writing or claimed to suck at it, could find a little fun in making something completely theirs. Or even get hooked on writing entirely.

Writing can reveal a lot about an individual, which makes it so thrilling to read somebody’s personal work. It’s scary, for sure, but getting to talk about your craft is the ultimate payoff. I love writing, and what writing can do for people.

For the Warrior Times, this is Kayla Banh.