How I Finally Learned to Enjoy Writing
For a very long time, I honestly never enjoyed writing. Somewhere in the endless stream of practicing persuasive essays for the district writing tests through elementary and middle school, I was no longer looking at writing as anything other than an annoying, time consuming chore I had to do for school. Don’t get me wrong, I liked learning how to write. The format made sense to me, I got good grades on papers, but I would only ever put in enough effort for that decent grade I wanted. I stuck exactly to the five paragraph format every student learns, and I tried to finish a paper as fast as possible. I carried this attitude towards writing all the way into high school, until a certain assignment made me break my pattern of only working hard enough to satisfy the basic requirements.
It was the last assignment of the year in my sophomore english class. It was just starting to warm up for summer; students could safely wear shorts and sandals in the expectation that the sun would be shining through the clouds by noon. The anxious excitement for the end of the school year permeated the air, causing endless distraction. My English teacher that year was one of those eccentric, almost crazy teachers that you could tell were really into what they were trying to teach you. Her enthusiasm almost managed to make me feel bad about not taking that class very seriously, and I wasn’t planning on taking this assignment seriously either. The project was to pick and research some place or culture in the world, find some myths to analyze, read a book or two written by an author from that area, and write a final paper explaining what you learned, and analyzing the novel chosen. I was so eager to be out of school, I honestly didn’t care very much about what I wanted to do for my project. I had no idea how badly that attitude was going to set me back.
First stop, the library. My English teacher brought the whole class down the street to the public library, a fun little field trip to make sure we all had the resources we needed. Our teacher set this up for her class each year, it was almost infectious, her passion to get every one of her students to find something they really wanted to read and write about. The Bainbridge Island public library is pretty nice, outside there’s a stone patio, and a nicely set up Japanese rock garden type landscaping. Our teacher led the class through the courtyard and inside, to a classroom sized room towards the back of the establishment. The librarians were ready for us, they had chairs set up like a lecture hall in front of a set of tables holding books organized by what regions they were from.There was even a short presentation by the librarians on how they could help us find a good book for our project, suggesting novels from different geographical locations and briefly explaining what they were about. To be honest, I didn’t really pay attention. At all. Until my teacher slipped this into the presentation, “I’m not sure if many of you will be interested in getting into a book like this in our timeline, but I definitely suggest it to those interested.”
Now one thing you should understand about me at this point, is that I get kind of competitive. I’m the sort of person that will try something just because I was told I wouldn’t be able to do it. I also absolutely loved to read when I was little, I was one of those kids that carried around a book everywhere, and was up to date on every popular series. Reading meant a lot to me, and even though these days I’m more likely to be entertained by watching a show on netflix, or playing video games with my friends, reading is still something that I love to do, when I get the chance. So when I heard my teacher talking about Battle Royale, (author Koushun Takami) a book that would be a challenge, I was intrigued. For a split second, I really, wholeheartedly wanted to read that book. Then the end-of-the-school-year laziness hit me, and I remembered that I would have to write a whole paper about the book I read. Did I really want to get into reading a “hard” book, put in all the effort to analyze a book that would be a challenge just to read? The answer to that question, unfortunately, was no.
I did what the bored, uninspired high schooler in me wanted to do; I glanced at the books from my chosen region, found the shortest one that didn’t look too boring, checked it out and went on my way. I lazily read my way through it, just another fantasy novel that happened to work for my project. We had about a month in total before the due date of the final paper, and I was done with this book in only a couple of days. I easily procrastinated a whole week before I even tried to start writing my paper, and even then I only outlined the parts of my essay that were easy, the specifics our teacher wanted. I wrote out a paragraph about the Japanese myths I had read, a short passage about the history of the author of the book I had read. But for some reason, I avoided writing about what the beef of my paper was supposed to be about, the analyzation of my chosen novel. I wasn’t worried about this avoidance, I probably didn’t really notice it or think about it at first.. I thought I could easily turn out some pages about it once I needed to. What brought me out of this cycle of putting it off was when I walked into the classroom one day, and my English teacher opened class by announcing that there was a week left until our final papers were due. That’s when I thought to myself, “Alright Caroline, you should maybe, probably, definitely, actually write that paper now.”
That night, I sat down at my desk, glass of iced tea in hand, bowl of chips on the side, prepared to fabricate yet another boring essay I didn’t really want to write. I picked up the book, flipped through it, rested my hands on my keyboard and- nothing. The easy flow of words, accompanied by the rhythmic clicking of the keys on my keyboard was completely absent. I stared at my open Word document, watching that little black cursor mockingly blink at me as I realized all at once, I have nothing to say about this book.
I didn’t know what to do, I was stuck. I knew trying to scramble for it would be messy, I honestly didn’t even like the book that much, how in the world was I going to write about it? I spent a few minutes flipping through the novel, frustrated that I just had to pick this book I didn’t even care about. That instant is when I remembered the book I originally wanted to read, the one my teacher warned against because reading it might take awhile, Battle Royale. The little glimmer of desire to read and analyze, understand that book came to the forefront of my mind once more.
I stopped by the bookstore the very next morning, and bought myself a copy. I read in all of my spare time. I brought that book when I went over to my friend’s house, I was even reading in the middle of my physics class. As the last weekend before the essay deadline approached, I eagerly devoured every word, every sentence. Amazingly, all this reading didn’t even feel like a chore. I wasn’t reading “just for school” anymore. I was reading for myself! I easily got swept up in this second novel, the one I actually wanted to read. There was so much this novel was saying, so much I wanted to communicate about it. I aced that paper. But most importantly, to my surprise and delight, I enjoyed writing it. I was interested, I had something to say, and my writing was all the better for it. This experience is what made me realize there’s more to writing than just following a basic format. For me, the key to writing my best is finding a way to enjoy writing.
