With NaNoWriMo going on this month, I’ve been seeing a bunch of blog/LJ/whatever entries about individual’s experiences of such thing. I have yet to participate in it because I kind of don’t like the pressure of churning out 50,000 words in 30 days and because I’m always writing for a holiday fic exchange around this time of year. I actually finished the holiday fic earlier than anticipated, but I still didn’t want to participate in NaNoWriMo. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t write something else at my own pace! In fact, lately I’ve been putting Portie the netbook to a good use by going to Hell(o) Beans in Itaewon, my favourite coffee shop in Seoul. With Portie and one of my favourite drinks, I can stay there for hours as I surf the net (yay for Wi-Fi!) and write fics.
Stephanie at Lunsh wrote an entry asking why we write. That simple question actually stumped me. Why do I write? I mean the simplest answer to that question is that I enjoy it, but after reading her entry, I actually started to think about why I enjoy it.
That made me think about myself as a child and how a simple childhood enjoyment turned into something I still enjoy as an adult. I mentioned before that I grew up as an only child and how I had to learn to entertain by myself. Well, the easiest way was to read, and around third grade, I was introduced to the genius of Roald Dahl by my favourite elementary school teacher. She read us Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in class, and that became a major turning point for me as I discovered the joy of books. I devoured whatever I read, which in turn developed my skimming skills.
While I expanded my imagination, I never quite got into writing very much. However, that changed after I read The Diary of Anne Frank in fifth grade, which left an impact on me in so many ways that it’s not even funny. From there, I became an aficionado of the Holocaust, and I started to keep a diary. They were terribly written, mind you, nowhere near the standard of Anne’s, but I started to write these pre-pubescent diaries. Then in middle school, I tried to write a fantasy novel using the Megamorphs (aka Animorphs series by K.A.A. Applegate) technique of writing a chapter from a different character’s POV. Again, that was a mess of a story, and I am ashamed to think it was the best thing I had written. My writing skills disgusted me back then.
As I grew older and immersed myself into different hobbies such as animes, video games, and the big Internet, I discovered fanfictions. Oh. Man. That opened up a new can of worms right there. I became addicted to reading these stories written for fans by fans, and I decided to slowly try to write my own. The ones I wrote in my sophomore year make me cringe when I look at them, making me wonder why I was so stubborn to not have people proofread them for me. Luckily, I joined the Harry Potter fandom, and that influenced me to write and use beta readers!
Seven years later, I’m still in the Harry Potter fandom, I still write fanfics in this fandom, and I still read in this fandom. Being in fandom (and studying English literature in college) has given me so much — friends, writing experience, and most of all, learning experience. I’ve learned how different it is to write as a blogger, as a fanfic writer, and as an essay writer who learned to BS through the words. I love expressing myself through words, which has always been much easier for me to do than being verbal. When I write, I try to act out as that person, even if my acting skills are quite lacking. I use writing as a way to distract myself from whatever is bothering me. Simply put, I write because I enjoy it. That should be a good enough reason. Sometimes we don’t need to have a good reason to do anything as long as it makes us happy, and that, my friends, is why I write.
