I Write To...

"'Write to save yourself,' Athos said, 'and someday you'll write because you've been saved.'"
            -From Fugitive Pieces, by Anne Michaels

I came across this quote while reading for class, and it struck me as very true to my life. I used to say that I wrote to understand my world, and I read books to escape it. In large part, that is still true. But I think my "someday" is closer, or maybe even now.

I have a shelf of spirals at home filled with angsty poems and paragraphs of random musings that I am embarrassed of, but I wouldn't wish them to not exist. There were so many times I didn't know how I felt about a situation until I read what I'd just written. The words in those spirals got me through many years in which I felt lost, confused, and sometimes even unloved.

And all the books on my shelves gave me insight into worlds I couldn't be a part of in my own life, while letting me escape my life for as long as it took to read the words on the pages I held.

I always knew I wanted to be an author, from the time I was five years old. But I spent most of my life writing things that weren't even remotely close to novels or even publishable poems. And that's okay, because writing made me the person I am and got me through everything I encountered in life.

But most of what I write now isn't musings on my life. It's not random observations or lines about the boy I have a crush on. Somewhere along the way, my notebook became filled with short stories and novel ideas. My focus changed to writing something that will ideally allow a teenager to become engrossed in a book for a while instead of whatever is going on in life.

That, more than anything, is my dream. Because words saved me.

Why do you write? Can you identify with that quote, too?