Journal Entry #14: "Nurturing Your Inner Writer"

Journal Entry #14: "Nurturing Your Inner Writer"

To what extent are people born writers? How much are they able to cultivate the writer within through education and experience?

What activities and experiences can you engage in in order to develop your inner writer? What part of your past has best helped you become the writer you are now? How motivated are you to continue developing your writing ability over a lifetime?

In my opinion, people really aren’t born writers. Nobody is born to do anything. While it would be an interesting concept, that certain people were destined for a certain thing, I just don’t believe it. Rather, I believe that people can show a knack for doing a certain thing early in life, something they become passionate about, and nurture throughout their life through practice in order to become extremely talented at it. The things a writer experiences in life can become the greatest influence in their writing. There is no doubt that the things we experience influence who we are and what we do, so it is only natural that this would also be an influence on what someone writes. However, it is also important that a writer is educated on how to write properly. While it is important for a writer to forge their own path, why bother if the person wasn’t taught how to walk down that path properly? Anyone who is good at anything had to be taught how to do it first.

There are several activities that I engage in in order to develop my inner writer. First of all, I took this course. I figure spending about 300 minutes a week focusing on writing is a great way to become better at it, especially when that is the entire purpose of the class. Another way I try to develop my inner writer is by asking people what they think of my writing. I constantly have people look over the things I write, asking for things I could improve on. I’m also very critical of my writing. Even if people compliment the things I write, I typically don’t agree. While that’s not necessarily a good trait of mine, there is no doubt in my opinion that it helps me nurture my inner writer, by forcing myself to always strive to produce the best writing I can.

There aren’t many things in my past that have helped me become the writer I am now. I was never encouraged to write, it was just something that I decided to do on my own. However, like everyone, there are past experiences that give me something to write about. While it may not always be positive things I write about, I find that most people like what I write regardless. Some of my writing isn’t even from my perspective. For example, the majority of the poetry I’ve submitted is from others' perspectives of situations, and one of the poems I’m considering submitting comes from the perspective of someone who is intoxicated at the time (though I obviously don’t get drunk and write poetry). My point of all this being, I’m never left with nothing to write about, be it about me or not.

I’m extremely motivated to continue my writing ability throughout my life. I started writing on my own time as early as grade 3, maybe even earlier. I remember my class would write stories back in grade 3 that we would read to the rest of the class, and I would have twice as many written compared to the rest of the class. Thinking of how much my writing has developed since then, I look forward to seeing how much more I can develop it. I’d love to become known for my writing, though that may be more of a pipedream. Lately though, I find my life has been too hectic to take time to write, which is very unfortunate. I hope I am able to get everything together so that I am able to continue strongly in this course, and with my writing in general.