On Writing

I have an odd relationship with writing. The best way to explain would be through examples.

At the age of five, I had finally learned how to write, kind of. As soon as I was able to put together somewhat coherent sentences, I begged my mother to take me to a local stationery store to buy a diary. As a child growing up in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood in southern California and thus one of the few in my class who did not converse in Spanish, journaling was how I expressed myself in my early youth. Even after moving to Oklahoma, I have kept at least one journal at a time throughout my whole literate life.

And then there was school work, in which writing became little more than a chore. Teachers seemed impressed, regardless. It seemed writing was the one thing I was good at; too bad I hated the academic style.

Thus, I made a foray into creative writing ... and fell flat on my face. My fiction lacked development. My poetry was just plain bad. Though I used creative writing as a mode of expression for a time, the constant dissatisfaction I felt toward all of my work led me to stop for the sake of my own sanity.

Right now I sit at a crossroads. Writing is still one of the only things I do that makes me feel competent. This has led me to write for the university's newspaper every week. Composing news stories often still feels like a chore, but the writing of critical entertainment reviews is probably the most liberating thing I could imagine doing in a professional setting. I have always been opinionated to a fault, so getting paid to express my opinion through a safe and familiar medium -- the written word -- is basically a dream come true.

Until I can reconcile my mixed emotions on the act of writing, I will most likely continue to experience a love-hate relationship with it. I love the English language. I hate time-consuming, scholarly obligations. For now, I stand somewhere in between the two in the worlds of mass media and journaling.