WHY DO I WRITE?
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If there's one thing I love about writing, it’s the honesty of it all. How can I possibly come up with an idea nobody has heard before? What possible combination of words can I choose that nobody had chosen before me? I am often plagued with worry about how I could possibly come up with something that nobody has thought of before, how there is any way my silly little brain could muster up something entirely unheard to the public ear. But it is possible, attainable even, for those willing to submit to the verity of their human nature. You must look deep into your soul and find the flickering candle that burns in our minds and hearts and bellies and tells us our most powerful secrets. There is no hiding. There is no lying.
If you want to be a writer, you must be vulnerable to the scariest parts of yourself; those we have buried under layers of days lived lightly. If you want to be original, you are going to have to dig further than you would normally permit yourself to. And that is what I try to do everyday; in every sentence, in every word. It is the ideas we are too afraid to share that are the most necessary to our progress. The words we are afraid to say, the stories that haunt us in the middle of the night as we toss and turn; that is what writing is about. It is human and raw and real, and refuses to submit to what society gnaws at us to repress.
If you’re not being honest, you’re not doing it right. If you’re keeping anything inside you locked up, your readers are going to know, regardless of if they know anything about you. It’s the stories that push the envelope that become staples of human life.
Writing is an artful form of liberation. I say artful, not artistic, because this discussion reminds me of the happy post-Thanksgiving warmth that usually precedes putting on a giant pair of sweatpants. Full and cozy with a hint of ambition. The feeling of words flowing from every fold of your brain at such a rapid pace you have no choice but to take out your computer and start typing. It is taking ownership of the strangest pieces of humanity and embracing all the bizarre feelings we are ashamed to face.
My favorite place in the entire gigantic campus of Michigan is the bathroom on the third floor of Mason Hall. It’s an unassuming academic building, with archaic lockers lining hallways of rushed students half-slouched over from their heavy backpacks. Amidst a sea of public school-esque floor tiles and an astonishingly scarce number of lefty desks, I have found respite in a worn out bathroom. It’s not the toilets or the sinks or anything like that; I’m not that weird. So relax. It’s not the bare bones of the bathroom, but what’s been added: layers upon layers of graffiti.
Some of the notes are more eloquent than others. My favorite is a quote from The Help written in bubbly print: “You is kind, you is smart, you is beautiful.” Inches away, someone else asked: “Have you seen any tiny ducks in the building?” One stall over, someone feeling preachy reminded her fellow toilet-goers that god loves them. Directly beneath it, “GOD IS A MISOGYNIST” is sprawled across the bumpy plastic stall door. These walls are a wonderful and weird and endlessly entertaining adventure through the psyche of an anonymous group of people who just really need to talk. If we’re going by my rule of honesty, these mid-pee thoughts are of the highest class of literature. And, because this is my free website and I make the rules, then let’s say it’s true. What is honest and real is far more impactful than what is lavishly force fed to the desperate mouths of people yearning for something more.
I love this bathroom, and I am very thankful that my majors will bring me back to the third floor of Mason for the rest of my college career. I love writing, and I am very thankful that this website has provided me with the space to show off all the things I am proud of. But most of all, I love people, and I am insistent that everyone deserves to experience the greatness of having your voice heard. And that is why I’m here. For you, for me, and for whomever I run into along the way.