Tuesday, January 18, 2011

The Writer in Me

The writer in me is different from the writer in most other people. So many times I look at my English major friends and think, "I don't write like them, therefore, I'm not a writer." I'm learning that there is a writer in me...but that writer looks nothing like the writer in any of my friends. And that's the way God created me.

The writer in me writes pages off of two words that pop into her brain while she's taking a shower.

The writer in me prefers prose to poetry.

The writer in me can't stand text-talk.

The writer in me likes lists, bullet points, and outlines more than essays.

The writer in me loves repetition, and she recognizes that some people can't stand how much she uses it.

The writer in me likes things to be succinct but as her friends who edited her first Torrey paper know, she can rarely get her thoughts to be succinct.

The writer in me loves symbolism.

The writer in me likes to make her audience laugh or cry.

The writer in me takes the advice of Miss Haley and Mrs. Walker very seriously.

The writer in me likes to connect very random thoughts.

The writer in me is frank, but not Frank.

The writer in me likes puns.

The writer in me doesn't look up words she doesn't know when she runs across them, but she when she finds a word she loves, she uses it incessantly.

The writer in me appreciates good poetry but can rarely get herself to read it.

The writer in me loves quotes.

The writer in me knows pretty much every rule about grammar out there and is always finding typos in books or correcting someone's grammar but is sometimes too lazy to use correct grammar herself.

The writer in me sometimes switches to talking in third person, even though she prefers to write in first person.

The writer in me (too) frequently uses ellipses. And sentence fragments for effect.

The writer in me always (unless for an academic paper) writes in the past tense because all the books she read growing up were books about pioneer girls, freed slaves, or Victorian ladies written in the past tense.

The writer in me likes using big words just because it makes her feel smart.

The writer in me knows that she can't not write.

The writer in me sometimes just loves books for the feel, look, and even smell of them.

The writer in me knows she was a reader before she was a writer and that she will always be a reader first and foremost. She also recognizes that even though she and her dad frequently disagree and fight, he was the one who made her a reader.

The writer in me prays, "God, you made me a writer. Make me a good one."

5 comments:

  1. Up top! *high five*
    I got you girl ;)

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  2. I love this. I love the way you write. I love that you make things your own, and don't let things make you. I love that you used a sentence fragment when talking about sentence fragments. I love that you stand out in a crowd, not because of the mask you wear but because of the heart you show. I love that you are human, but you make something special out of it. I love that you used my quote, because I need to be reminded that I said that not so long ago. I love that you are my friend: my Torrey friend, my bookworm friend, my writer friend, and I hope that we can build each other up and challenge each other as we live and experience and explore and learn and grow in our understanding of ourselves and our God. I love you.

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  3. P.S. I love the fact that while posting the above comment, I had to type in that weird code, and the word was "verse"; it seemed fitting as we are writing about writing in poetic terms.

    <3

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  4. So good to read, Siobhan. You are a writer. God is making you a good one :)

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  5. That was also a discovery I made my first year of college. :) Not with all the details, but the being-a-writer-but-in-a-weird-way thing.

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