Writing Motives
...that had happened but secondly it was written to help others through their parents’ divorce. My parents had been married for 23 years; a whole lifetime spent with someone… for it all to end is a shame. My father had a heart attack in 1995 and had quadruple bypass surgery. My father became verbally and physically abusive toward my mother. My family life was thrown off course in a matter of years…my father cheated on my mother and my mother was thrown out of the house several times. Towards the end of their marriage my brother, my best friend and only safe haven moved out and my mother admitted herself into rehab for her alcohol addiction. My parents got divorced in 1999 and my mother got custody. My father has major health issues which makes everyday a fight for his life. My mother has been sober for over seven years and has been remarried for three years. Seeing my mother’s strength in admitting she had a problem and watching my father’s health evaporate has shown me that persistence is the key. To always strive to fix a weakness and to learn to cope with the bad news that comes in life. Winning this contest was an important step in my life, not only because it means that I write well but because it showed me that I had touched someone else’s life. Being published in the little bitty ACSI book…might not sound like a big deal… but I was PUBLISHED! There were six states that competed with a total of thirty-two winners, and I was one of those. The book isn’t anywhere that you can go buy it, but it sits on my bookshelf at home and I smile when I see it. I smile because I know that someone thought I was good at something. I inspired someone…I might have helped someone. I put my thoughts down on paper and someone wasn’t like, “So what?” The day that I found out about being published, I felt as though I had earned something that I had worked hard at and didn’t think I would get credit for. I did it for an assignment… not for fun. After I won the award and was published, I realized writing didn’t have to be bland. Writing could be fun and exciting; it was all in what I made of it. Writing is an adventure…it can become your life because it is something you love to do and in a way it has become mine. When I write I feel as I can do anything. I can create my own world or I can gripe about the real one. No, writing itself isn’t THAT interesting…it’s the expressing part that makes it fun and lively. Soon after writing for me became a love, not a task. It was something I did in my spare time and sometimes I even made time especially for it. I turned into a little, writing machine. I wrote all the time. I started a travel log while I was in Europe for five weeks about places I had been and the cultural differences between the United States and the United Kingdom to serve as a record for me years from now. I write about movies, love, death, independence, walking in the rain and countless others. I write about anything and everything. I started an online journal and still now, a year or so later I write it in. The journal is a place of feedback from the rest of the world. Writing helps me to see things clearer, to understand myself better, to vent, deal with and learn from experiences, talk without talking, organize my thoughts, etc. Writing became my passion in life…I have a pure zest for it. It is an outlet for my emotions, whatever they may be – love, joy, heartache, sadness, life’s questions, and anger. Everyone gets mad, right? You know you do, so why not write about it? I actually love confronting people, I know that sounds horrible. I am also open minded though and can agree to disagree but there was this one time, I got into this argument with this girl at church, of all places, and I left without confronting her but I knew I would regret not so I went back to the church and told her all the thoughts I had been thinking, even all the mean ones. Later I went home and wrote about it so I wouldn’t forget what I had said because there were some pretty good one-liners in there. But just in case you don’t…take for example you get into an argument and during that argument you want to say something mean, but you don’t because well, it’s mean! Or maybe, you don’t get the chance to argue you just sit and simmer so, when you get home you think to yourself, “Man, I wish I would’ve said…” ...