How I went from Journal to Medium Writer
“It is the writer who might catch the imagination of young people, and plant a seed that will flower and come to fruition.”
- Isaac Asimov
I had writer’s block for a couple of weeks. My problem was I didn’t know what experience to write about that could relate to readers.
Do I write about how I went from a shy kid to a social adult?
Do I write about my first year of college?
My second year of college?
Should I write about my family?
Another idea was writing short stories, but I haven’t written one since I was a kid, and I was not good at storytelling.
Honestly, the doubt made me wonder why I started writing again. I wasn’t thinking about being a serious writer. I never liked writing essays during high school; I just felt happy when I wrote something that sounded like it made sense. All I knew was that I had this joyful feeling when I wrote. I felt like my voice was heard. I had a thrill in my head and my body when I wrote my feelings on paper. Most importantly, I felt the words I wrote were important and it could relate to anyone who chose to read them. After some time, I decided to write about my writing experience to understand my feelings about chronicling personal experiences and stories.
My Journey as a Writer
My first writing experience began when I wrote short stories in third grade. I wanted to write my own stories after reading Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Pearson. Terabithia served as an imaginary kingdom for the main characters Jesse and Leslie. During their time there, they encountered magical creatures, defended their territory from enemies, and received new friends along their journey. Teribithia not only served as a safe haven for Jesse and Leslie, but it inspired me to use my imagination to write about my own adventures. One story I wrote was titled “The Time Keeper” where I went on a quest to find the timekeeper, an old wizard responsible for controlling time, in order to go back in time to stop an evil witch.
I crafted two short stories every day until I wrote so much to the point papers flew out of my blue folder.
I even felt happy devising them because I felt like an author, but I didn’t want to share my stories with anyone. Since my older sister didn’t like writing at the time, I feared she would degrade my stories by saying they were “lame", “trash” or “a waste of time".
The idea of my sister downgrading my work made me think creating them was pointless, so I threw all my stories in the trash.
I also had experience writing in a journal when I was eight years old. The journal had a lipstick cover on the front surrounded with purple and white stripes. My dad gave it to me in hopes I would use it to write words from the dictionary to enhance my vocabulary, but I decided to use it to write about things that happened in my day instead. I wrote in the journal for a year until I lost it one day.
When I found it at twelve years old, I threw it away thinking I didn’t need it anymore. I thought it would be considered childish to continue writing in a journal. I never heard of people chronicling events in their journals past the age of twelve I didn’t want to be ridiculed at for writing in a journal. It took me a four years to realize that writing was not a childish phase.
After I threw away my journal, I would still think about jotting down thoughts about my day. In hopes of getting back to my past activity, I asked for a pink leather journal on my fourteenth birthday
After I received it, I thought about how embarrassing it would be if my friends or family found out I used a journal to write about thoughts and feelings at this age.
My friends might not like me anymore or I could be ridiculed by my classmates.
My parents could scold me for keeping up with this activity and might say it’s worthless.
In an effort to lose weight, I used the journal to track how much I ate. I also jotted down vocabulary words to learn new words. The journal also came in handy to plan out my day by the hour.
After two days, I was uninterested in writing anymore words. Planning out my day seemed as if I was putting myself on a strict schedule, and I did not like the habit of writing how many cookies I ate in a day.
Frustrated that I couldn’t use the journal for anything than writing emotions I tore the pages.
When I was sixteen, I remember feeling sad because I felt like I was not doing enough things that made me happy. So I went back to that leather journal and did what I knew how to do, write out my emotions.
While I was writing, I had a thrilling feeling in my head every time I moved my pen to write. I also felt relaxed because I felt like I was emptying the thoughts from my mind and laying them out on paper. Since I was a junior in high school and I felt embarrassed for writing in a journal again, I wrote off my writing time in that journal as a one-time thing thinking I would never do it again. That was until I finished writing in the journal, five months later. In addition to finishing the pink journal, I finished writing in four more journals, four years later.
Writing online was a decision I made two months ago; I was inspired by other Medium writers such as Shannon Ashley and Ayodeji Awosika who wrote about their life experiences and their advice to help others, so I thought it could be cool if I did the same.
I didn’t realize that it took time to edit your story before you published, or that not a lot of people would read your work initially.
Despite this, my goal as a writer is to help people with their own personal experiences. I hope to help young adults with topics about college, seeking counseling, and shyness. I look forward to writing more passages and connecting with the Medium writers.
I can’t wait to share my stories with you!
Doyin Oyelami All Rights Reserved©
