The Art of Writing

Part 1 of 1: The Art of Writing

Life isn't about figuring out a way to live forever. It's about creating something that will. Something you're passionate about — something that makes it all worth it.

A lot of us grow up knowing that eventually, we all die. We're faced with a reality that we aren't comfortable thinking about, so our time is often taken for granted. As we get older, though, we become all too familiar with a saying that goes something like:

Do something instead of killing time, because time is killing you.

I was born a philosopher. I guess we're all born philosophers. We question everything, accept nothing and observe everything. As we get older, though, we want answers, but what we don't realize is that we stopped asking the right questions. Maybe it's because we realize that the world is far more of a complicated place than we're comfortable accepting. What happened to that child who had creative imaginations about the world? The truth is, nothing happened. You simply become afraid to use your imagination, because you may think it's silly or wrong. It's not. We don't know how we got here or why we're even here in the first place. Imagination is the key to a creative life — something that gives meaning to the fantasies that become your reality.

Once a month, right before I go to sleep, I ask myself the following questions:

* Am I creating something that will live on?

* Am I the person I want to be?

* Do I make myself proud?

* Am I running after my dreams or from them?

Most of the answers I come up with don't satisfy me. So, I continue thinking of ways to change my answers by next month.

This is why I write. I write because writing is the tension between wanting to be heard, wanting to express yourself, yet not wanting to be seen. I know I'm not the first person to say it and I know that I won't be the last. We want to make a difference, somehow. We want to feel useful. We want to connect to people who think in similar ways.

Writing is a form of art. It's messy and not linear and because of this, writers often connect with other writers. We grow, we connect, we build things that matter so that when we do lose it all, when our time comes, it hurts — but we know that other people will get to see the art you've created and be inspired by it.

College is less important than a lot of us make it out to be. It teaches obedience, not intelligence. At the end of the day, you have to rely on the ability to go out of your own way and teach yourself, instead of putting trust in a system. College is great for one thing. Making connections. Be a self-starter. A rebel. Because becoming someone who matters, someone who will have a legacy starts when you walk your own path instead of following one that many people have walked before. It's an endless cycle and you won't go much further than anyone who has already walked that path. Success is a mindset and it starts with your will to succeed.

It's not about the mistakes you make, but the mistakes you make and don't fix. It's as simple as that. Once we fully grasp what that really means, only then can we truly live a meaningful life.

What doesn't kill you either makes you stronger or makes you wish it did. Our most defining actions in life will be taken when we have a choice between holding on to something or letting it go, saying something or keeping it to ourselves – there's a direct result that says how you choose to act will be your karma.

I'm writing these words knowing that people from all over the world are going to read them. I'm writing these words knowing that people from all over the world of different cultural backgrounds and religious beliefs have probably thought at some point in their life, that "nothing they had to say was of value." Yet, simply by writing these words, I've let these words become the truths of my past. I began as an aspiring writer, thinking "Nothing I have to say is important enough to be heard, because I'm living a lie." In the world that exists today, we have a world built on fantasy; psychological warfare built through social media, news and stories persuading you in efforts to make you believe in their side of the story, etc.

Isn't that what poetry is, in the most basic way? We write, most of the time, because we know that somewhere out there, there are those who will inevitably relate to our stories and inspire those people to write their own. Once we understand why we've been so dependent on the falsehood that "what we have to say is not important", only then can we truly allow ourselves to become the poets we want to be. There has always been one question on my mind, though – how exactly do we write in such way that we're understood with absolute clarity? Is that something that can be taught? Is that something poetry workshops can teach us, or is the question something we already know the answer to?

ONLY IN RECENT YEARS HAVE WOMEN AND MEN WHO SUFFERED PHYSICAL OR SEXUAL ABUSE DARED TO REVEAL THEIR STORIES AND TURN THOSE TORMENTS INTO ART. BECAUSE OF THOSE PEOPLE, IT HAS BECOME EASIER FOR YOUNG WRITERS TODAY TO DEAL WITH SUCH MATTERS IN THEIR OWN WORK.

The ones who feel as though the world around them is broken are the ones who write great stories, either in the form of a novel or in the form of poetry.

Art has depth and has no clear picture. It's all about expressionism — it's all about perception and sharing it with the world. Why do you write?