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When I Wanted to be a Writer
An “I Desire” Essay
The first thing I remember writing was a “play” when I was five years old. My dad helped me transcribe it. In the play, a princess was captured from her village and taken to a nearby castle. Her subjects were angry, and decided to go to the castle and sit chanting until her captors got so annoyed, they let her go. I’ve always been an idealist.
So when I was eighteen and had several notebooks of angsty poetry under my belt, I decided that creativity was the thing that mattered most to me, steady paychecks be damned. I enrolled in art school, and began studying for my BFA in creative writing. My education was priceless in terms of the development of my craft. But I wish I had had a better understanding of what, exactly, I was giving up when I decided to pursue life with creativity at the forefront.
“It’s not that I don’t crave security,” I said to my girlfriend while we were lying in bed one night. “It’s just that I don’t know if I can reasonably expect it.”
After graduating into the recession, I knew that entering into the world with a fine arts degree was going to make providing for myself difficult.
But I also knew that writing is essential to my wellbeing. When I’m writing regularly, I feel fulfilled, productive, my self-esteem shoots up. When I am not doing…
