{"id":10602,"date":"2015-05-11T09:51:18","date_gmt":"2015-05-11T14:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=10602"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:07:33","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:07:33","slug":"why-i-write","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=10602","title":{"rendered":"Why I Write"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"(photo<\/a>
(photo courtesy of Revital Salomon, Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On some days, it comes easily. My mind is a harsh scrawl of bright ink, frazzled, frenzied, and I have to scribble down words as they jump to the forefront of my head like a flashbulb going off \u2014 discombobulated phrases, random lines of dialogue that some character will say at some point in some distant work, words that sound pretty, words that sound ugly, vague descriptions, settings. There are so many<\/em> ideas.<\/p>\n

On other days, not so much. I hunch over my desk for hours. Nothing comes to the keyboard. I don\u2019t break the tip of my newly-sharpened pencil. My creative faucet needs some plumbing, and there\u2019s no telling when I\u2019ll be able to turn the sink on again. Unless, of course, inspiration strikes me at some time that\u2019s entirely inconvenient, such as at three in the morning, in which case I will rouse from sleep and jot down my idea on the pad of Post-its I keep on my bedside table solely for that purpose.<\/p>\n

Writing is quite a process. I can\u2019t imagine someone deciding to undertake the ordeal unless, like me, some mischievous demon is behind the steering wheel, cackling every time it runs through a stoplight. I am a tree abuser. I ask for a new notebook every other week and, in the time between, fill it with poems, short stories, character studies, plot outlines. If there\u2019s something I need more than a notebook, it\u2019s an eraser \u2014 forget the tiny ones on pencils. They\u2019re worn down within an hour. I need the heavy-duty kind \u2014 the big pink ones, but I like the multicolored, patterned ones, because at least they get to look pretty for a little before I put them to use. I scratch plot holes out, rewrite, rename, and emerge from my room the following morning looking like I had a duel to the death with my pillow and barely came out on top.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat doesn\u2019t sound fun at all,\u201d you say. But hey \u2014 I\u2019m happy about it. And when I\u2019m not, I write.<\/p>\n

I write because I have to do it. It\u2019s ingrained in my bones, always in the back of my mind. I\u2019m never lonely; my stories are with me. I never keep anything bottled up inside; I let it pour from pen to paper. For a long time, I believed that there was not so much a lack of joy in the world, but that I wasn\u2019t worthy of seeing it, of experiencing it, and writing opened me up to a whole new wealth of emotions, of inner potential. It made me realize that if I wanted the joy in the world, I couldn\u2019t sit around and wait for it to come to me. I had to reach out and grab it and tell it that it was going to be mine someday and that I was going to do everything I could to have it. Writing breathed life into me, and because of it, I\u2019m alive to write today.<\/p>\n

By Hayley Sigmon, 2015 Thomas Wolfe Scholarship winner<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On some days, it comes easily. My mind is a harsh scrawl of bright ink, frazzled, frenzied, and I have to scribble down words as they jump to the forefront of my head like a flashbulb going off \u2014 discombobulated phrases, random lines of dialogue that some character will say at some point in some 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