Why I Write

This is an essay I wrote for a writing scholarship. Feedback, please?

I fell in love with the Nancy Drew series as a second grader. I could barely go to the bathroom by myself, yet I worked through the fifty book series, imagining myself as the crime fighting heroine. Somehow, I realized early on that I was not destined to fight crime and solve mysteries; I cried at the sound of a lawn mower, actually. Not the greatest background for a fearless leader. Instead, I started to dream of writing stories, of creating that perfect character which all my readers would aspire to be like, of becoming an inspiration to frightened little girls like myself. Carolyn Keene replaced Nancy Drew as my muse.

But, all things must end sooner or later. It was fifth grade for me. I had written my own little stories, “Harold the Ant”, “Haley Evelyno: the founder of Tabasco and Bayous in Louisiana”, and I had even written a poem about Biblical characters all stuck on Noah’s ark together. I had destroyed the ring with Frodo, fought the White Witch with Aslan, and ridden Black Beauty over and over again amongst the rolling hills of my imagination. However, despite all this positive reinforcement from places other than Nancy’s little blue convertible, I was devastated when my older sister abruptly informed me that Carolyn Keene did not, in fact, exist; she was actually manifested in many ghost writers all working together for a large corporation.

And that was when I decided that I was destined to be a writer, to transform writing from a money-making company-led pursuit into an artistic and stimulating mission. Scoot over, Shakespeare! I would be better than ‘Carolyn Keene’; I would create a world just as amazing as Nancy Drew’s, but all by myself without relying on another person’s originality. I would bake the cake AND frost it AND consume it, all in one fell swoop.

However, though I always put ‘author’ as my future career on the questionnaires I had to fill out as a middle-schooler, I never actually wrote anything outside of school. Sure, I could write great stories, but I had to have a topic to follow, or else I hit the speed bump before even turning the ignition. Finally, in high school, I had an English teacher who saw in me something different. He gave me rather good grades for my analytical writing, and equally appropriate grades for my rhetorical arguments. As my physics grade dropped, my English grade soared, and I finally saw writing as an outlet into which I could pour all my accumulated emotions from other areas of my life. I took a creative writing class and received the same encouragement. I began to write constantly, criticizing society, books, music, film, politics, people, etc., even sacrificing math problems once in a while to update my highly successful blogs. I write to escape from the demands of my baby brother, the stress of my friends, even [secret] the demands of my mother. I am always busy writing, and from experience, I know that I work much better when I keep busy. Writing has become my lifesaver, the activity to which I devote much of my free time. I would never even consider giving it up; I would not be able to function. The incentive of hearing praise and seeing my writing published is exhilarating, but I am truly happiest when in the midst of an eye-opening analysis. This is what writing has given to me; the least I can do is to continue to write, to give others the opportunity to be inspired in the same way.