Why I Write

"I knew that I was no legitimate resident in any world of ideas. I knew I couldn't think."

When I first read this line in Joan Didion's essay, Why I Write, I was shocked. In my opinion, writers are the most in-depth and creative thinkers out there. I now identify with her words because I realize that I often find myself trying too hard to seem as though I have knowledge on a subject; I pretend to be an intellectual that I am not. When it comes to knowledge, I am 95% curiosity. It is this curiosity and desire to understand myself and the world around me that makes me crave writing. I am constantly asking questions, and writing is my attempt to answer these questions. If I am wondering about a new development around the school, my journalistic instincts would be to ask questions, research, and write about it. If I find myself tugging with my true feelings on a subject or on an event in my life, I pull out my journal and write.
I write because I love the feeling of typing the period after an amazing sentence and of seeing the fresh ink on the paper of a story I am extremely proud of. I write because at midnight when my mind is racing, my friends are asleep and the counting of sheep is an utter failure, there is nothing else I can do. I write because it is the only way to truly remember experiences in life. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a thousand words can do an unbelievable job at explaining every detail, every aspect of a memory. I write because it is the moment in which a person is the most alive and the most aware of the world around them and the world inside of them.