A Path To Realising My Dreams
I had to defy all odds to become a writer, a writer’s journey is one full of obstacles and uncertainties, just like the way a soldier matches to the battlefield not knowing what to expect, I embraced writing and matched into an uncertain future. When I was seven years old, I told my mom “I want to be a rock star!” while prancing around the kitchen in a tutu licking chocolate frosting off a spoon and simultaneously singing Our Song by Taylor Swift, to which she replied with a grimace, “oh hunny, that’s not a very good idea.” One day when I was eight, I came home with a piece of writing and announced that I wanted to be an author. It was a horrid piece of work, but I was proud of it and wanted to show it to everyone, my celebratory moment was short-lived and my family did not approve my career choice. Deciding my career path at the adolescence stage was the hardest part, I shifted from wanting to be a veterinarian, a dentist, and even a curator. Eventually, I settled on teaching hoping that this career path would quench my desire for writing. The path my family had forbidden me to take remained a gentle ringing in my ear.
The moment I switched my major to English Education my family was dumbfounded. My mother told me, “but, Malysha, you can do so much better than that”, and others told me that I should focus my energy on something more “practical”, as if language is not something, they use every day. I still get that strange look from people when I say that I am studying literature and writing a look I am sure most English majors know all too well. Parents are supposed to nurture the dreams of their children at a young age and my parents did the complete opposite of that. My parents crushed my writing dreams by sending me to summer technology and science camps where I was forced to undergo mass amounts of dreaded math classes. If anything, it made me want to prove them all wrong, well, that and my desire to stay as far away from algebra as possible.
However, writing is not as simple as just wanting to prove to someone that it is possible, but instead is something that needs to be cultivated and worked on. From a young age, I have journaled and filled almost half a trunk with scribbled pages bound in old worn covers. Most of the writing is likely unintelligible or filled with mindless childhood drama, but they are filled, nonetheless, and it established a steady flow of thoughts to paper from my mind. I hate to begin writing, but once I start, there is no stopping me. It has always been that way and growing up, English class was always my favorite because it just clicked. Even when my other classes became frustrating and stressful, literature and writing acted as a buoy to keep me afloat in deep water.
Although understanding the English language and learning how to use it in academics came rather easily to me at a young age, the motivation and passion that the little girl in the tutu had to discover the world and share it with others have not been as easy to achieve. When attempting to write something, I can often stare at a blank page for hours and not create one single thing. At times, there will be over a dozen blank pages opened on my computer with my name in the upper left-hand corner in its beautifully elegant and often stifling twelve-point, times new roman font. I will just stare at it; the curser blinking to its own perfect, mocking, rhythm and wonder why my fingers will not type and the words will not come out. Luckily, there are a few prime resources I use to get the power tower of my creativity flowing. My key inspiration is reading poetry. It does not matter if I am writing about what is in my fridge, the view outside my window, or even my obituary; the encouragement I receive from the stanzas of a poem is like music to my inner brainchild.
Ironically, I used to hold a deep animosity towards poetry throughout grade school. There was a time I could read the simplest poem by Shel Silverstein or even Dr. Seuss and be flustered by the complexity and rhythmic qualities that often broke the traditional rules of English writing, rules that had been ingrained in my system as unbreakable. I held resentment for the versification of words in such a free entanglement of syntax and morphology. The kind that evoked a deeper sense of meaning than I wished to explore. I wanted the words to tell me directly what they meant rather than interpret the context, and as a result, I lost the incantatory effects. It was not until I was forced to write poetry myself that I finally grasped the beauty and aesthetic of this form of literature. I began by sitting in front of a blank piece of paper once again, but this time the same rules of language did not apply, and I felt the freedom of the words flow onto the page. It was from that point that I fell in love with poetry, and subsequently, it has seemed to help excite and trigger my writing potential.
My writing process is a mixture of procrastination and productivity. The advice from most writers is to just keep writing, but for me that means staring at a blank word document for eight hours straight, looking up thirty-eight poems in honor of the snail I accidentally stepped on earlier and simultaneously slamming four cups of coffee to stay awake. Each time the way I write changes, and so do my reasons. I think that the more I learn about the world, the more I travel, and the more education I receive, the more I find reasons write, and how I write changes. In one instance I can write a full outline, do a month of research, and spend a full year writing a research essay on the theory why women in the canon of literature are underrated. The next time I write can be completely and utterly different. It can be procrastinating for three years and then writing a whole bibliography on my cat in a single night. In this way, the way I write is also like my exercise routine. Ideally, the goal is to do it consistently for at least twenty minutes a day, but sometimes obstacles come up, and the motivation is just not there. Forcing myself to exercise when there is no catalyst means I will not be putting in my best effort, and so I just stop. After weeks of not exercising, I start to feel sluggish and the same goes for writing. After enough time, the need to stop dawdling and get back to work begins again. However unhealthy that habit may seem, it is my process, and I dwell on the inconsistency of change to keep things from getting mundane.
Despite the inconsistency, the rejection, and the constant battle of finding motivation in a world where everyone tells you what you are doing is not enough, I would not have it any other way. Writing has always been there for me, and I will not betray it. Although it can be a difficult journey at times, I would rather do something I am passionate about than spend the rest of my life disappointing the little girl who spent a lot of time pouring out her soul in her journals and dancing around the kitchen counter. I never got to be a rock star but the life of a writer feels similar to that of a rock star, when I start writing I write as fast as I can just like a professional musician warming up for a performance, they don't worry about accuracy and neither do I. Oddly enough I have made peace with the fact that am yet to encounter a load of rejection, as I continue to write I look forward to a future full of infinite possibilities.
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