When reading Joan Didion’s Why I Write, I noticed that she describes writing as “an aggressive, even a hostile act.” Personally, I do not write aggressively. I think of writing “aggressively” as the way I write when it is 11:55 pm and my 5 page paper is due at 12:00 am. I throw ideas on the page and I, myself, become frustrated and possibly “hostile”. I do not write because I want to impose my beliefs on anyone or invade their “private space”. When I write anything: an essay, a poem, a text message, I am writing because I feel I need to. My pursuits, or the reason I feel as if I need to write, are always completely different. Do you ever find yourself texting someone because that text is worth 65 points of your chemistry course? No. Have you ever written a private diary entry about a fight with your boyfriend that you planned to share so that you could “impose” your beliefs? Probably not. I find that most students my age keep their writing as private as possible. You have a passcode on your phone to hide your text messages, you don’t Instagram about the skeletons in your closet, and you certainly wouldn’t have felt comfortable typing this blog post honestly with the entire class staring at your screen. Joan Didion may write because she wants people to see it. Joan Didion may write because she wants to persuade people to feel the same that she does. Joan Didion does not write for any of the same reasons I do. I write when I feel I need to text my brother and tell him I love him. I write when I am told to by a professor. I write when I don’t want to tell anyone else what I’m going through. I do not write to change anyone’s mind or impose my beliefs on anyone. While Joan Didion sees writing as something aggressive, I see writing as something calm and something I keep to myself as much as I can. Clearly, Joan Didion and I write for very different reasons.
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May 2017
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