The Death Of Writing
By Kyle Smith
“How many of you, I asked the people in my class, which of you want to give your lives and be writers” - Annie Dillard, Death Of A Moth
I hate writing.
I hate starting a work.
I hate the process.
I hate the rough drafts, the rewriting, the tweaking, the guidelines, the restriction, looking back at your work, the fear, the disappointment, the grade, and the horrid thought of doing revisions.
I.
Hate.
Writing.
Let me rephrase, I hate writing for school. It all seems so pointless. Read this book, compare it to this book, restate your thesis in the conclusion. I’ve never seen something so completely devoid of soul and heart. Something so dead that you couldn't even see what you were supposed to learn, gain, or feel from it. All you could see was the rotting corpse.
Within this structure, we try to inject life into this lifeless body, and at best we create a zombie. Yes it’s moving and eating, but ultimately empty and without real motivation and inspiration. We play Frankenstein to the paragraphs, putting together parts that don’t belong and try to reanimate the dead. And we work so hard to create life where it is not found. They wanted us to dig deep, but all we did was dig our own grave.
I have to ask why?
Why are we so confined in school writing?
Why must we put our time and energy into something so rigid and fruitless?
Why do we spend so much time plugging in quotes to fill quotas?
Why do we waste and squander our voice?
When I was really young I wanted to write a book. I don’t remember what I wanted to write; what I remember is the excitement of creating my own world where I make the rules. But that was around the time you learn about how to write an “essay”. The zombification of the written word and the inner voice had begun. I was taught the five paragraph essay format. I struggled. Not grade wise, my essay got A’s. I struggled all throughout my school writing career because I saw the corpse when my peers didn’t. I saw my excitement and my wonder slowly dying, along with the dying words on the page. By the time I got to high school, all that was left of my writing voice was the skeleton. And I was angry, they killed my voice, they killed my wonder, they killed my writing. I had been angry for so long that I just succumbed to them. I was so tired of fighting and trying to break free from the five paragraph apocalypse, that I let them kill me.
And then I was resurrected.
After living in the land of the dead so long, I never thought there was a way out; I never thought the words and my voice would live again.
Everything I was taught was… wrong?
I suffered for something no one ever used? I trusted these people, and they were supposed guide me. I was so wounded and betrayed.
They saw the disease that was slowly eating away at my soul, and … they did nothing? They did NOTHING. My suffering had no purpose, and they never told me of the eventual light. My voices death, the death of the word, of the paragraph, the death writing, MY death was in vain.
But, I am dead no longer. Like Jesus, I have risen.
Voice was the first to come back. Voice was shy and timid, wobbling on legs which haven't been in use for so long. Slowly but surely, Voice was walking, being funny and sarcastic. Voice was taking risks, saying things that they wasn’t sure was okay, but did anyways because it was them. It was me. Not long after, Voice became strong, I was the words on the page, being filled with meaning and insights. Not a formula where you put in x, y and z. Writing was starting to look like writing again, not algebra. My writing started gaining strength again, as my voice did. And lastly, I was revived. I found myself getting excited for english class again. I was ready to write; I even began writing for personal reasons. I have recently lost one of the most important people in my life, and wrote about my grief and loss. In his death, I made art. I helped my soul heal with writing. I found life within death.
I have fought, and I have been defeated. When I had lost all hope, when I was an empty shell of who I was, life was breathed back into me. I let them kill me, but I was lucky to find someone who helped mend me and the words back together. Not everyone can get that. So fight.
Fight.
Fight.
Fight.
Fight for your love of writing, fight for your voice, fight for the sentence and the paragraph, fight for yourself. Never let them kill you, because writing is so much more than they can ever teach.
I never hated writing, I hated what writing became for me. But it is no longer that rotted body. Now it is so full of life. Now I love writing.
I love how writing can speak to you.
I love how one work can mean so many different things to different people.
I love how writing is whatever you want it to be.
I love how writing can help free my feelings, and make them into something that can make sense. I love how writing can turn my ugly, hurtful emotions into art. I love everything about writing.
I.
Love.
Writing.
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