Written With Love

I’ve been writing since I was very little. I’d come home from kindergarten and play my favorite game, bookshop. I’d write book after book and use the stairs in my house to show them off as if they were on display in a bookstore. My childhood love of books only grew and grew. I wrote plays in elementary school and forced my friends to be the stars. I wrote novels as a middle schooler and posted them online for people to read. I once, rather embarrassingly, self published a piece of writing in 8^th grade (and I promise you none of my friends will ever let me live in down). In high school, I wrote a play and then produced and directed and choreographed it as part of our school’s One-Act festival. I participated in National Novel Writing Month. I took creative writing classes. I’ve kept journals. I started writing blogs. I’ve always had an insatiable desire to write.

This last year or so, my desire to write has become more intense than ever. The combination of travelling abroad and working at a creative writing center turned me into more of a writing addict than I’ve ever been before. I wrote a 237 page  novel. And then 70 pages of another. And then 40 pages of another. I hope this doesn’t sound as if I bragging (I can’t promise any of the writing is good), but to simply express how strangely obsessed I am with the craft itself.

But why? What do I love about it? I love writing as a medium to express myself. It is an ideal way to work through ideas. On this blog, I’ve written about many difficult and personal things. The experience of writing these pieces has been cathartic and therapeutic for me. I’m constantly grateful for the opportunity. My even more personal thoughts are shared only in my journal where I can put down on paper the thoughts and worries that keep me up late at night.

As for fiction, I think my motive behind it differs. It’s all about control. When I write, I get to create worlds. I get to make characters and dictate their lives. Their triumphs, their catastrophes, their relationships- all of it is at my fingertips. With a few taps on my keyboard, I can assure their dreams come true. In my capable hands, my characters always get a happy ending.

In my life, I don’t always feel the same way. With all of next year’s applications for turned in, everything in my life is up in the air. I don’t know where I’ll be living. I don’t know who I’ll be living with. I’m not sure what grade or subject I’ll be teaching. I don’t know what my life will look like and that drives me crazy. I crave control. I want to be able to type it all out: Get into my top program, live in a city that excites, with roommates who inspire, teach a classroom of kids who flourish with me as their teacher. I want to write myself my own happy ending.

But I don’t have that control, none of us do. In reality, I’m applying for a lot of competitive programs and competing against a lot of qualified applicants. In reality, it is all out of my hands. It’s in God’s.

As I’ve sent in each application, I’ve reminded myself that there is a classroom out there that is perfect for me. It might be in Indiana or France or Hawaii or Ireland, or maybe in a place that isn’t even on my radar yet, but somewhere out there a classroom of students who I don’t know yet, are just waiting for me to be their teacher. God has handpicked this class just for me. God has picked out my roommates, my grade, my subject. God is the writer of my story and God has done all the planning.

The one thing that makes me different from the characters I write is that I have a way of communicating with my author. Whereas my characters can’t complain when I throw a trial at them, or thank me when I let them succeed, I have a personal relationship with a God who cares for me. I have prayer. It is through prayer I can tell God the dreams written on my heart while also accepting that God may be leading me in a different direction. It is in prayer where I give gratitude for each chapter already written, where I ask for strength for the character development segments that may come my way, and for unfailing trust that God’s pen will craft me my perfect happy ending.