Why I write.

I've found that, in a very loose way, I am like King David of the Bible. When I write about my toils and things that I'm going through, I find that I change a lot from the beginning of the piece to the end. I typically start out at point A and, by the time point B comes around, I'm a lot different. Normally, it goes from a negative to a positive. And I do a lot of learning about myself.

Now, go find a Psalm. You'll see that David normally starts out with some problem and complaining about how he feels forsaken and like he isn't being looked after and by the end of the Psalm, he's all, "I LOVE YOU GOD!!!"

See what I mean about David and me? He lived a few thousand years ago and was royalty and I'm a 21st century upper-middleclass girl but we both share two things: our love for our God and a love for writing.

Transition.

I write for a lot of reasons. One being that when I speak, my words aren't words and when I'm actually speaking English and not my own language, I have a bad tendency of stumbling over my words. Another reason is the one I mentioned earlier; I learn about myself when I write. I overcome things when I write. I get lost when I write. And only when I get lost can I ever be found. Because, honestly, what idiot would go searching for something if they knew where it was?

If you looked around my room, you would be hard pressed to not see any books. Books on my desk. Books on my nightstand (a whole stack of 'em). Books on my shelves. Books on my dresser. Books on the floor. A whole library of books neatly organized in my closet. Writing and reading has built me. It's the reason I am who I am. Without the fictional worlds that I have a tendency to overanalyze, there's no way I could even think about existing in the "real" world.

When I write, I build a character that is like me. I modify the character, of course. Give her blue eyes and a better ability to speak coherently. Give her weaknesses. Give her a boy to fall in love with. Give her a mission she'll fight for and people to love on. She is me, but she definitely isn't me. I think I do this because I've always made myself a character in the books that I read. I want to be the heroine. I want to be the Hermione (of Harry Potter) or the Annabeth (of Percy Jackson and the Olympians) or the Viola (of Twelfth Night...or She's The Man). They're strong, smart, witty, sometimes confused, always awesome, and, above all else, the heroine of their story. They impact and save lives.

I write because I love stories. And I'm in one. As Shauna Niequist said in her book Cold Tangerines, "God is a storyteller. He's a mad-scientist and a father and a magician, and certainly, he's a storyteller", God loves a good story and He has complete jurisdiction over all "real life" stories. He wrote the book to your life. So maybe I am the heroine of my story and maybe of someone else's too. But it doesn't matter if I'm the star or the supporter: I'm in stories.

You can't have a writer without a story. You can't have a story without characters. You can't have characters without being inspired. And you can't be inspired if you don't step out and figure out your own story before you start writing a fictional one.

Go and have stories. Let me know how it works.