WRITING has always been a cathartic experience for me. It started when I was about seven. I was extremely shy and did not take to making new friends easily. Alone time was wonderful to me — I could draw in my little corner without interruption, daydream about being a doctor or actress while I gazed out our living room window. Because I didn’t talk much, there were a lot of emotions unexpressed within me. Drawings didn’t cut it. So I turned to words.
There were blank sheets of paper before me that one day. I took a pen and began writing. Days passed and I filled many sheets of papers with poems and illustrated stories. My Mom delighted in my new hobby and brought home scratch paper from work. I filled the papers with short stories, haikus, limericks. I felt free.
How did a 7-year-old find freedom in words? My parents regaled me with stories from their childhood, fairy tales and stories they made up themselves. By example, they taught me the beauty of reading and how it’s a fantastic playground for the imagination. Our household help shared stories of the provinces they came from. My younger sisters and I played a lot of pretend with our Barbie dolls. There were so many stories all around me. I wanted to create my own. I wrote about butterflies and fairies, little sisters, a guy eating the buttons of his shirt. I wrote and wrote and wrote. It felt good seeing my childlike daydreams come to life in words.
As I grew older, I came face to face with teenage angst. Ah, the teenage years provide such fodder for writing! Poems and stories had a mix of richer themes: the angry frustration of not being understood by anyone, the exhilaration of first love, the pain of having your heart broken the first time, the world-shattering betrayal of friends, the incomparable joy of sharing secrets with trusted ones… It was a rollercoaster of themes. I had turned to diaries at this point. Gone were the days of writing on my Mom’s scratch paper. There were secrets in my writing now, and to share them with my family was too embarrassing.
Why write? I write to release my thoughts, my emotions. I am much better at the written word than I am with the spoken one. When I speak, I stutter and stumble on my own words. But when I write, everything flows with more truth and beauty. I am in love with the written word.
If I don’t write in one day, I go nuts. Writing can come in the form of a blog entry, a little quip or a poem. I have to write. I have to let my thoughts out. I have to let the stories out. There may or may not be people who read them, but I have to write. It is my release. It is my therapy.
In writing, I have connected with others. In writing, I have come to help others. It is both a passion and a means to actualize my personal mission: to inspire and help others. Writing has helped me release so many bottled-up thoughts and emotions; perhaps I can help inspire others with some of the things I write.
I love to write. And for as long as there are words, my ode to writing will never end.
July 13th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
hi.. i would love to write.. i envy you people who started writing at a young age.. yes, i know, it’s never too late, and i believe too, that the love for the written word is imprescriptible, they say..
i love to read.. however, sometimes i end up bottling up feelings of insecurity to the authors of the books i read.. i hope, one day, the muses would smile also at me.. just thinking out loud..
July 11th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
[...] Tiu presents My ode to writing posted at Happy [...]
July 9th, 2008 at 12:52 am
I am totally in line with your writing. Just like you, it was my vehicle in expressing my feelings. Please go to my website http://www.sentimentsbook.com about my published book in the US. I poured all my sentiments and feelings in one book - my love of family and inspirational poems. I know you will like my book.
July 8th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Cheesy, but true.
July 7th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
I agree with what writing has done to me. Personally speaking, I find it easy for me to pour out my thoughts and feelings through words in pen and paper than saying them in verbal manner. It is easier for me to erase and delete negative emotions and feelings in a given period of time once I can put them into writing. Words that are unspoken sometimes can come to life most especially if the reader of the lines that you make will simply agree with what you are trying to put into a certain with the use of words alone. In writing, one must completely put the details in a manner that is well understood by someone who has the heart to read. It is not just simply adding a description, it is transferring the emotion from within you to the output of your write ups, it is putting life to the art of writing. I love writing, it gives me freedom to express the unexpressed and the unsurpassed.