Note: This post contains an ad for one of our featured authors. To avoid ads, support us by upgrading your subscription today <3
We live, in a time, where writing has become more accessible than ever. Anyone can write if they so choose. New stories are crafted every single day, worlds come to life, our souls searched and brought bare before the readers. But as writing becomes more easily accessed, as stories are shaped in new ways, it makes me wonder: What does it mean to be a writer?
It’s… an open-ended question, I’m quite sure. In fact, I’d love to hear your answers. What qualifies you as a writer, my dear reader? Is it the meaning attached to the words you pen? Or is it the method? The community? The means to an end, whatever it may be? So many ways to think about it, and I suspect everyone will attach to it an answer ripe with thoughtfulness.
For me, the answer is simple. In fact, I may have answered the question already, brought about through my own rambling. It is indeed through the meaning held within the words, those stories I bring to life. Yet, it stems deeply from a desire to create: Impact, alluring, pulling together people who find inspiration deep within my canvas. There is nothing more significant then seeing others moved by the very thing I write.
Why this? Well let me tell you a story:
When I was younger (I can’t recall the exact year), I was interning at my local Drop-In Center. It’s sort of like the Boys & Girls Club, but local and with more resources, like clothes and food and all sorts of things. During this internship, I worked with a group of two others, who were running something called a Youth Action Board. The goal was to show that we, as youth, could inspire change through helping our community.
It wasn’t well-organized, and soon fell apart. However, we got to do a couple things before that — like helping out an Author who was doing an event for her newly released book. The novel was Sleeping in my Jeans, by Connie King Leonard — and takes place in my home state of Oregon. The story is a powerful and emotionally impact-filled tale of two girls and their mom trying to survive after becoming homeless.
As part of our work for this event, we got to read the book beforehand, and I’m glad we did. Like I mentioned, the story really is emotionally impactful, and nearly moved me to tears several times throughout my reading. Fearing for that family, watching them struggle while trying to maintain some semblance of a normal life — it’s incredibly touching.
It makes me appreciate how fortunate I’ve been to grow up in a mostly stable home. But more significantly, it showed the power a story can have on others. If maybe, more folks read stories like these, grappling with tough issues — and seeing the human behind the struggles — would perhaps, more people be more thoughtful to those they see experiencing this? Or is it easier to appreciate a story if instead, you don’t have to think about it otherwise?
I’m not… entirely sure. But I knew, at the very least, I valued the impact Connie’s story had on me, or on the others who read it with me. So much so, that years later, I bought the book and added it to my collection once more — remembering only a faint description of the book inside my head. Somehow, like an itch refusing to fade, it burrowed into my mind, begging to be read once more.
And once more I did.
Because of this, I’m drawn to impact, and everything surrounding it. It’s a beautiful notion of our ability to create, with great distinction, human experiences. To draw on the good, the flawed, and the gray. Every splash of color creates a distinct story craving to be told. It can have it no other way, clawing out, from mind to paper, into the head of a reader from whichever platform necessary.
So, for me, I think this sums up my answer. To be a writer is to create, with intent, to move and inject a meaning into the reader. Sadness, love, hope, joy, excitement. Through these terms, every story longs for its place. And readers? They long to read, to feel those impacts, to savor every inch of a great piece’s canvas. A writer is a painter, the story is the mural, and the reader? They’re the enthusiast, waiting to implore within, the meaning in which the story creates.
And isn’t this just such a wondrous thing?
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.