On George Orwell's "Why I Write"

(This may give people some insight into how crazy I really am...)

Upon reading this selection by Orwell, I’ve been able to draw a good amount of parallels between us. Both he and I began to story-tell and to write from a very young age, and very few works are left over from that time period. We both have imagined our own lives as someone’s story, and begun to narrate it in our own minds as though we were writing it ourselves (which, it could be argued, I suppose we both were). Something that differentiates us, though, is that I have always known that I wanted to write, and never tried to deny the fact. Writing is something that has always come naturally to me, something that I have always cherished as a part of who I am. Writing itself has been a constant companion to me throughout my young life, and I anticipate will be for the rest of it.

There are many reasons that I write what I write, and the reason varies depending on the genre that I am writing. When I write my pieces of fiction, usually it is because some character or other has entered into my mind and walked around long enough to make a home there, thus inhabiting in my mind a space to set out their life, their background, their story. There is a particular room in my mind, painted a red-brown color with deep-stained bead-board on the walls, furnished with a simple rectangular table and a few wooden chairs. It is through the door and into this room that the characters enter and find their way around, so I’ve come to assume that they all come from whatever land of un-imagined lack-of-being lies beyond that door. Once they enter into my mind’s room, they exist, and it is my job to share who they are. So that their fictional biographies do not simply remain unshared and in my mind, I write them down, and try to piece together the things that the characters don’t remember, or will not share with me, to complete the puzzle that is their story.

When I write (as I am writing now) something short, personal, and explanatory, something that describes how I feel about whatever it is that I am feeling towards on that particular day, I usually write to vent that emotion (though, in this particular case, also due to the fact that it is a school assignment). When I feel overwhelmed by a strong case of emotion, I always get an undying desire to put my pen to paper or my fingers to a keyboard and to just sit and write. I write out my emotions in the same way that many composers take down emotions into their pieces of music, later to be played back and felt all over again, this time perhaps to be shared with many other people. My pieces such as those usually become blog entries or journal entries, the difference being whether I want others to read the composition of words and feel the symphony of the emotion or not. In both cases, I write from a deep desire that becomes a burning need to write, whether it be to share my own story or someone else’s story, my own life and emotions or those of my characters.