Hi guys! Can we just skip the part where I awkwardly acknowledge the fact that I missed two posts? Yes? Thanks so much, I love you all.
Anyway, today I thought I would write about writing. Because that makes perfect and total sense. You in the back, I can see you rolling your eyes. Yeah, you! So getting on with it...
I'm going to start with something pretty basic: I write a lot. This probably won't be a surprise to anyone who's been to high school, but it goes a little beyond that. First, there is the part of me that is a high school student, so of course I write all the time for my classes. (In fact, I've been known for my creative writing and essays for as long as I can remember.) However, with a few exceptions, I don't really count that stuff. I also do a lot of writing in my spare time, mostly short stories (and some much longer ones) and a bit on this blog. This writing, my personal writing, is much more interesting to me, since I actually get to put my personality into it and have some fun.
On the one hand, I know that I have a distinctive writing style (which is a little different from what you read here, due to my excessive social awkwardness and the possibility that there are actual real live people reading this), and most of the time I like it, but I have a voice in my other ear telling me that everything I write in my spare time is wrong. (Let's just ignore the fact that I switched from hands to ears. I think you still get the point.) This is about everything from my naturally sarcastic narration to my overuse of parentheses (come on, don't say you haven't noticed).
Part of the problem is that writing assignments at school are so subjective. Last year, we were given a prompt to write about the similarities we had with a fictional character. I immediately thought of Hermione, and I got really excited about writing this essay. I kind of ignored the usual limits that I put on myself when I write in school, and I ended up with the essay that turned out to be my favorite piece of writing that I've ever done as an assignment. Since it was about me, I was comfortable in revealing my writing style in a way that I never had before, and it paid off. I got a perfect score on it, but I know that if I had turned it in two years earlier, I would have failed the assignment. Even though I consider it to be one of my major writing achievements, I know that the teacher I had then wouldn't have been so accepting of my style and tone.
All this means that I've developed two brains: one for school writing, and one for personal writing. Most of the time I wish my personal writing brain could just take over, but I do acknowledge that being able to write more professionally is important. And then I'm right back where I started.
You're probably completely bored of reading about my messed up brain by now, so kudos to you if you read it all through! I did really enjoy writing this, and I haven't really said everything on my mind, so if no one has any objections, I think I might come back to this topic at some point. In the meantime, what do you think? Do you have two (or more) separate writing brains? Leave a comment and let me know!
