WP4: My Scrapbook
My relationship with writing has always been a little complicated. Growing up, I was praised to be an excellent writer by my parents. They always mentioned how unique my voice sounded in my essays, chalking the success of my pieces to the way they always had me write my own thank you and birthday cards with fully personalized messages in each one. I never got to get away with just writing my name and handing it off to my sister. My parents like to take credit for my academic prowess because of their old fashioned card writing expectations for me. It’s a little funny.
In middle school, I struggled. The training wheels had come off and I was expected to write in a highly specific way. I could write the flimsy five paragraph essays I was supposed to write, but they were hollow assignments given to my teachers in return for my A.
Junior year of high school, I learned how to insert myself back into my assignments, whether it was telling an anecdote about my personal experience in the conclusions or changing the title to a clever pun, I could cheat the system to get back my voice.
Finally, I got into this class.
I was really reluctant to enter a class that was solely about writing. I had convinced myself that I was a bad writer, not just in academic work, but also in my creative projects. As an animator, I had written, animated and produced a total of five short films in high school myself. I mistook the constant need to make more as a sign that I was bad at writing. It was backwards, but it’s how I saw my work.
This course turned my concept of writing on its head for me. There’s an innate connection between a piece of writing and the person writing it, and the two have a difficulty separating themselves from each other. No matter what type of paper is being written, it will always turn out differently due to its creator being a unique individual. It was all starting to click in my head. That’s why I never felt fulfilled regurgitating information in past essays.
Having the opportunity to write about subjects I actually enjoyed discussing and had a stake in changed the way I saw my assignments. Instead of asking myself “what do I need to do to wedge myself into this random topic”, I started pondering “how do I connect with and enter this subject?” Even though it was a small adjustment in the syntax, it made me feel actually excited to write about things. I was my own motivator, not just the fact that WRIT-150 is a required class to graduate from USC.
Though I felt freed, I think I still write in spite of everything. The only way I feel motivated to write papers or posts is spite. I’m spiteful because of the way that I was taught how to write and it shows in my writing, I’m afraid.
This entire semester, I’ve written my way through a lot of inane internet topics that are important to me in the middle of an identity and diversity course. When I was given the opportunity to explore myself and my identity, I wrote about things I was always spiteful about that I couldn’t talk about in high school. The fun stuff about sonas and ponies and online friends. Because of that, I feel like I missed out on a part of this class, in a way.
I have never fully explored myself through writing. I’ve learned only recently that it’s the perfect medium to, but I’ve never taken the first step towards putting pen to paper about the stuff that really matters. I feel a little disappointed in myself that I couldn’t do that this semester, with a professor who encouraged it and a space in which it would count towards my education, but maybe that part is for me.
I’m torn, though. Writing has always felt like a solo mission, something for my eyes (and potentially my teacher’s) only. I now realize how collaborative it is. With sources and peer review, writing gives us a reason to share and intertwine stories. I feel as though I can only explore myself in writing with no one else affecting my decisions or style. Maybe I’m off base.
Perhaps the role of writing is to put yourself out there and tell your story among everyone else. Maybe it’s the way we can connect with the other seven billion other people on this Earth. What is writing for if not to be read?
It takes a sense of bravery to put yourself in anything you create. I’ve always thought about it like making a scrapbook. If I’m writing a piece, I’m putting snapshots from other people’s lives into the pages. I’m potentially involved in the different memories or scenes, but I’m mostly the one behind the camera. I can rearrange every physical piece of my relationships to these people into a narrative and give it away to someone else. I don’t know if people are used to making scrapbooks for themselves.
The same bravery it takes to make your own scrapbook is used to write a piece solely about yourself. You have to be ok with creating things for the sake of yourself. There are other people involved in the pictures and memories that make up your book, but it’s a selfish piece of art.
And it’s ok to be selfish. To write something purely for the exploration of yourself is freeing. Even though all of my pieces this semester were essentially spite filled brain dumps of everything I’ve ever wanted to talk about in an academic sense, I still learned about the selfishness of writing. No one else can tell your story. No one else can make a scrapbook about your life.
That duty falls on you.
