Myself as a Middle School Writer
First of all, at the time of my writing this, my entire living room has been consumed by a pillow-and-sheets fort that literally takes up the whole room and may utilize every chair/stool/sheet/pillow/large book in the house that is not already in use or permanently nailed down somewhere.
And the computer I am using is also in said living room. Can’t…move…
Anyway. Last night, I made the discovery of a stash of my writing notebooks from the seventh through ninth grades (most of it from the eighth grade). And I kind of read through all of them. And I was taken aback: I’m not one for praising myself, but for a middle schooler, I was kind of good. For a middle schooler. There was plenty of naivete, and a good helping of awkward sentences (my personal favorite is “He could smell it every time he closed his eyes”), but I wrote about complex relationships and themes and honestly, I think, handled them very well. My prose wasn’t too shabby either. Even a little elegant. (Maybe one too many adjectives…)
I also laughed: I haven’t changed at all. I still write about the themes that obsessed me in middle school—unrequited love and lust, the fear or knowledge that you’re alone or insane, how relationships change with time (or don’t), sexual tension and the fear of it, obsession, depression. Heck, I’m writing a novel packed full of these things right now.
So why did I write so well in my first three years of writing (or why am I willing to say that I did, when I’m not willing to praise my writing now)? I think it’s because I wrote with abandon. I didn’t start something thinking “I’m going to refine this because I want to show it to an audience, and so I’m not going to let myself put in anything stupid” or “I can’t write this, I just finished writing something similar” or “Why start, I’m not going to finish this one”. I wrote to please myself, to conjure up settings and characters and scenarios that I wanted to explore. Now, I tend to write assuming I’ll show it to a friend or writing group or the Internet. I was also too naive to understand that some writers make it and some don’t: I didn’t care.
I’m going to try to return to that selfish way of writing, writing because I want to and because it makes me happy. I think, like in middle school, that carefree spirit will make what I turn out more natural and more “me”. And better.
