Title: 96 Lines

Author: Yih

Written: August 21/22/23/24, 2001 // September 5, 2001


I can type, so I think I can write.

I guess you could call me a wannabe writer. One of those blooming 90s phenomenon that took the pen and started sprouting full fledged long stories. Yes, long stories because I didn't know how to write short and concise. I wasn't taught how to express myself; I just let the words flow out of me.

The words turn into sentences that become paragraphs that evolve into epics. Then, it was just word length. I strove; I drove, to find how many words I could express myself with. Then, I wasn't thinking of the art, it was just the word count. How many words… how many words…

Though, I eventually did find out that length didn't make the story, the story made the length.

I learnt it the hard way through college students, all English majors. They were my beta-readers; or rather, hard critics for someone who is just half-way through the endless toil of higher education. It's not that school's bad; I'd rather do other things than homework weights. And it just keeps getting heavier and heavier as the years pile along.

Those undergraduates, or as I prefer to call them "the breakers," have sent by my way dozens of corrections over the past year. Yes, the breakers because my sentences are chopped apart like raw liver and delivered back to me. My diction is corrected. My prose is criticized. My grammar is the bane of my existence, sometimes. Sometimes, I'm actually good at it. But other times, I cannot seem to escape the lack of parallelisms in my sentence structures.

If I had known it was this hard to get back into the writing mode, maybe I should have stayed in my "burned out" period. But I suppose I deserve it. It takes work to be a fine writer, and even as much as I'd like to think that I have a genius talent--I don't. So I'll slave to get to the point where I can write something I can actually read without wincing! Now--, that will be the day.

That will be the day, when the best of times will be spent revising and the worst of times will be spent revising. It's a never-ending process, the art of writing. I enjoy every minute when I write because I love to do it, and not because I'm pressured to. It's actually fun to me.

So, I guess I'm a little strange. Words are like toys to me. I keep playing with them, and I never get bored of it. There's so much to do with them, so many possible syntaxes! Though, I'll be the first to admit, I hate the English term paper as much as the next girl. I'd rather express my own "imaginality" than comment on someone else's originality.

It just comes, and I cannot stop the miraculous inspiration. I do not exactly know where my desire to write stems from. It's a thing of mystery that perhaps I'm not privy to know. But one day, I will have at least a suitable answer that half-way satisfies the rhetorical question. Why do I write? Why do I write this? Why do I write this way?

I write many things. I have many written types of things.

Poetry happens to be the breath of life for me. I write minute poems and never bother to look back. Because in that second of time, I've recorded what it meant to me. I might read it one day again and pull it up with vague interest, but I rarely revise because at that particular moment there was a meaning in that strange phrasing that's lost to me now. I may never find out what I meant, and I don't really mind it. It was there then, and that's all it ever was.

And it's the stories that are my reach out to the world. As hard as I try to be different and unique in my writing, conveying myself in ways that don't seem entirely me, doesn't feel right. The best writing is what I know and feel. Perhaps, it's a good thing that I'm so temperamental and emotional. I've felt most of the range of feelings that an angsty teen can feel. I've been stressed; I've been elated; I've been depressed; I've been humiliated.

My feelings on my writing is that I write so well because I suppress what I feel, being the natural introvert. The only form of expression comes from the literal and figurative speech of the English language. And since my dramatic departure from writing in the middle of 8th grade, I've pursued my reentry into the writing world with a fervor that won't fade.

But since that push, that game of catch up, I've realized that the purest writing is what spills from the soul. It's also the hardest type because it draws from something deep inside, and it involves more than an understanding of myself, but a true comprehension of what is around me. To write well, to write deeply and thoughtfully is a gift of the watcher inside of a person. To be able to take the visual knowledge and find an explanation that is intangible is what the writer is about.

That's the type of writer I'm afraid I will never be. I'm the impatient girl that can't wait for the stoplight to turn green. I miss the details that an appreciating writer cannot. My writing shows my rush to get to a point that I'm not at. It's coarse and cliché. My prose needs retuning more than my squeaky violinist skills.

I continually need to remind myself that constructive criticism is good for the soul, at least for the development of a better writer. I've shed a few tears over it, and I'll bet anything that more drops of Jupiter will fall. I just have to stand my ground and not give up to the temptation of quitting. I'm not here to fail; I'm here to succeed.

Writing's not just a game to me. Something that last a few moments in a lifetime then passes by like those quizzes I always fail in Physics, that barely effects anything more than 10% of my grade. I've written too much for it not to become more than just a game, but a lifestyle. I live to write, and I write to live.

The two processes are the same to me. I'd be lost if I wasn't capable of splurging my thoughts onto paper. I think I'd go insane if I wasn't allowed the written word. It's a part of me that won't be squelched, that won't be denied.

I'll write until I'm brittle-boned and white-haired, relishing every thought I place in an aesthetic fashion onto the lined sheets. And hopefully even longer than that.

Writing has become a part of my present lifestyle; I hope that in my future lifestyle I will still be writing.

(c) 2001. Yih