I hate people who squash dreams. They’re the pythons of creativity. They choke the life out of imagination.
I hear many stories about friends of mine that wish they could write a novel, that think they have no gift in it. And I also hear stories about the snore jobs in English classes where the teachers wear their prissy outfits and hang by strict rules and guidelines and seem to love the red pen way too much, so much that it’s almost discouraging to a young kid who simply has a wild imagination. Color within the lines, please. That’s against the rules.
Fuck the rules. Forget the lines.
That’s the beauty of writing: there are no lines, and the rules are there for you to bend and break once you’ve mastered them. It’s a beautiful thing.
I’ve experienced that typical English class. I won’t lie. And for the most part, it was frustrating. I think I never truly discovered any gift for writing until I hit the community college. And I enrolled in a very simple English course. And I met my teacher of that course, and he said these words to me–
“You have a gift….”
That changed everything.
I forgot about those stuffy high school teachers, the red marks on the papers–”too many fragments” this and “unclear” that and “blah” this and “blah” that. Who cares if you didn’t understand what I wrote! We still today discuss Edgar Allan Poe, and many of us have interpretations of what he’s written–and you’re going to complain about understanding what I’ve written? Please. Grow a brain.
I appreciated my community college professor. I’m glad I didn’t have my gift squashed by those pythons of creativity. I’m glad that those little English classes didn’t poison my perception of the written word, thinking writing is a chore instead of a joy, thinking words are laughing jesters instead of faithful companions. Thinking that I’d be sitting at a computer, writing a term paper, and the only words I can come up with are my name–watching that white space laugh at me. No, I didn’t lose my creativity. I kept on writing. Somehow.
To all you young ones out there–those who love to read–and I don’t mean just for the fun of it, I mean with this insatiable, undecipherable need to imagine, to engulf yourself in a story, an authentic human voice–you need to remember that writing isn’t about rules or thinking or any of that. Writing is about letting go. Writing is like reading, only you’re creating it for yourself. Rather than someone creating it for you. So don’t let anyone–or anything–keep you from finding that discovery–a truth that says you have a gift. A gift to write. Keep writing.
You transcend that cold world with only a few words on that white space. Let it flow. Let it go. And you will overcome the ‘no’.
I only write this particular article because I ran across another REALLY wonderful film–God love Sean Connery. It’s “Finding Forrester”. Naturally, I love it so much because it’s literally about writing, about finding your voice, about the concept of writing essays, writing books, publishing. Stuff like that. It’s AWESOME! Even moreso, it’s about overcoming stereotypes and believing in something that others might tear down because they think you might not have the ‘gift’. Great film.
If anything I said so far still doesn’t grab you–if you still think you don’t have the ’stuff’ of writing–well, believe me when I say it’s a choice. You can either believe, you can either write–or not believe, or not write. But watch this clip, and you’ll understand what I mean–
When I say you can.
