The lights in my room remain off; the only source of illumination derives from dim fairy lights pinned haphazardly to my walls and the glaringly bright screen of my laptop. With the $75 fee paid and my essays written, my college applications are submitted.
My chosen major? Accounting.
I’ve been writing since I could spell. Not well, in the beginning. Sometimes my letters looked backward or upside down and my words weren’t any you’d find in a dictionary, but they were stories nonetheless. They weren’t fantastical tales, by any means. More or less diary entries with slight embellishments. It’s not like it mattered, they were my stories.
But they did matter—the stories, that is. My writing mattered. My writing matters, presently. It’s my favorite hobby, even when the material isn’t all that interesting or it’s just another grueling school assignment. The words I choose and the order I put them in remain largely significant to me.
I’m not exactly sure why I enjoy it so much. Sometimes, I can’t fit into a maximum word count with all the ideas I’ve got racing around in my head and other times I’ve no concept of the English lexicon. Sometimes, I’ll open a blank page with a groundbreaking story idea and then be left without the slightest clue how to convert it into a coherent sentence, and then I want to never write another word again. You could call it a love-hate relationship, but I see it more as a mighty dragon hoarding its glittering treasures up in a cave on the highest mountain and torching all of the poor townspeople who make the trek up to its lair in hopes of receiving the smallest charity. But love-hate works too, I guess.
There’s no particular style I prefer. I’m willing to put almost any words in any order for any reason. I’ll take requests, and sometimes I’ll reject those requests. I’ll start a story, and then sometimes scrap it because I hate it and I hate words and I hate writing. Other times, though, I’ll write something worthy of the dragon’s hoard, and it’ll sound exactly how I imagined and be perceived exactly how I intended. And I think that’s what makes it worth it in the end.
My “voice” is something I’m still perfecting. I think it’s almost there, but I also think a lot of things will change when I’m older, and that the dry, sorta-sarcastic writer’s voice I’ve developed is bound to be one of those things. For now, though, it’s something I’m proud of and try to incorporate into all of my work.
It’s easier than real words. Real words take careful consideration and require a particular cadence to convey a certain thought that may or may not be judged the right way. Written words require consideration, I’ll concede, but written words I can type or scrawl and then never look back to. There’s no rubber eraser or backspace key in real life. It’s daunting…
The elephant in the room, I suppose, ought to be addressed. I plan to major in accounting when I go to college. Why? I’m not sur—that’s not true, I know exactly why. I’m majoring in accounting because it’s what’ll make me money. Writing, as much of a treasure in my cave on the mountaintop it is, rarely produces profit unless I can suddenly write a seven-part book series detailing the romance of a pretty boy who wants nothing more than to enjoy life after his dreary and depressing childhood and a hot-headed girl with a no-nonsense attitude who, though exasperated with the boy, finds herself falling in love.
I can’t, though, so I must begrudgingly obtain a well-paying job and use that money to pursue my writing.
Even then, writing isn’t something I see as a career for myself. It’s a hobby, a comfort—a side quest, if you will. Making it the focus of my life, a priority or a task, would only snuff out the flame of solace I find in it.
I’m not upset at this. I know to continue enjoying writing, it should stay on the backburner. It’s a painful truth, but a truth, regardless. I’m not sure where the words will take me as college and my adult life loom nearer, so, for now, I can only hope they lead me somewhere on the page.
