My Little Story

I only recently came to realize the power of stories. They weren’t something that I had paid any attention to, but unknowingly I consumed thousands of them. Everywhere I went, there were stories just waiting to be told. From the pencil on the counter to the passer-by hurriedly pacing on the sidewalk, there were always stories hidden. Once I realized that everything had a story, and that the act of writing and stories were nearly one in the same, I understood better what it meant to be a writer.

The biggest change that my writing has experienced is a renewed emphasis on storytelling. One can do something without fully understanding what that something is, and for a while that is exactly what I was doing with writing. I was writing and telling stories without knowing that I was. Over the course of this semester, I became ever more aware of that and was able to more actively create cohesive threads in my posts.

My favorite example was my marching band post from earlier this year. Four Years and a Blanket is a great example of my writing becoming storytelling instead of simply stacking sentences. When focusing on that, I can write something infinitely more interesting than I could have before. It is incredibly surprising how a simple change in mindset can have such reverberating effects but thinking about writing as a story instead of writing as only writing does have a remarkable impact.

I have also become more comfortable with putting my personality into the things I write. Earlier in the semester, I tended to have some good ideas but would cut and remove them because they were not the set status quo. But further on, accented by my recent post I Can’t Beat This Friggin’ Boss, I became more open with expressing myself. I wrote something that I thought was funny and didn’t shy away from the possibility of other people not being humored by it. I have been a reserved person throughout my life, so even though that seems like a small victory, to me it is a major one. I hope to write a few more posts like this in the future.

In discovering how to write better stories, I also discovered what I disliked writing about. I did not enjoy writing food reviews. I did not enjoy writing about political issues. I did not enjoy writing editorials. Each of these were boring and incredibly difficult to write about. I found myself constantly checking the word count as it laughed and taunted me from the top of the browser like a king to its jester. It was a bit difficult to realize that there are certain topics or styles of writing that just do not agree with me. I wish I shared the passion Gold had for food or the passion many politicians have for presenting their opinion, but after giving it the good ol’ college try I can say with confidence that it just isn’t for me. I value this realization greatly.

As it stands now, I feel much stronger as a writer. I have a solid foundation built by writing about how I would like to yell at Disney for doing “The Owl House” dirty and relaying the most horrifying move in experience I have ever heard of. At the beginning of the semester, my professor told the class that the only way to get better as a writer is to write. Well, I have written thousands of words, and I hope to continue to write thousands more. A storied career of storytelling has only just begun!