Writing is hard. I understand this could sound a little strange coming from someone who writes often, passionately, and is currently studying to do it for the rest of her life. But it's true. Writing is hard, especially creative writing. It's more than just stringing words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into stories. There's a beating heart to it, a life force to the words that cannot be taught, but rather, has to be grown. They call that force your voice--
--and the truth is, I don't really have one.
This, too, might sound strange. I've been writing pretty seriously since the ninth grade, when I dropped the idea of becoming a physicist (which was all well and good until I realized how much calculus I'd have to study) and decided instead I wanted to be a writer. I'm still going at it. I'm a creative writing major in a fantastic English department and I'm so excited to keep learning. But the thing is, the whole time I've been writing, I realize I've been focusing on a lot of the wrong things.
After a long time coming, I finally queried that book I wrote--the one written in every free nook and cranny of my busy high school schedule--to agents. And every single one of them rejected it. Now, I'm not really a stranger to rejection. I have a folder of letters of rejection from various things, mostly art programs and one university. I wasn't expecting anything different from agents. But this time around hurt far more than those, because telling stories was something my peers and teachers and even universities told me I was good at. All those letters told me otherwise.
The letters were painful to read the first time, and when something possessed me to read them all again, I thought I'd made a horrible mistake. My motivation was shattered. How could I keep going if my writing had so many problems? If I had no unique voice and no power to pull readers in? What kind of writer was I if I couldn't breathe life into my stories? All this time, I had been so concerned with technicalities, that I paid no attention to cultivating those very vital skills.
But reading those letters was the opposite of a mistake. There's a little fire burning within me, and with every challenge I meet, its flames climb higher and higher. For every "I wish you could do this", and "you need to be able to do this" I read, I told myself, "Okay. I can learn how to do that. I can grow."
I recently tweeted, "I'm starting a new book and it's gonna be the best thing I've ever written and my heart is so happy". I'm not messing around when I say that. What I have is more than just an idea--it's a full-fledged story, running through my brain, desperate to push past my fingers and be told. It won't be an easy process. I'm a busy college student, with papers to write and research to conduct and a community to serve. But when I wrote "CHAPTER ONE" at the top of a brand new document last week, I took the first step of a journey. I don't know how long it will take, but I am disciplined, determined, and unbelievably excited.
So here's to the journey. Here's to finding my voice.
Erin Christopher
Florida State University
