A Writer’s World
Some people collect figurines, some collect comics, others collect playing cards, but I collect words. That’s what writers do.
We collect words that turn into ideas that turn into stories that make the world bearable. We store words in our minds, in notebooks, in flash drives, even in our pockets. That last part comes in handy when people are “at a loss for words” — we just reach into our pockets and hand out words. There are always words. Always.
Where people see a box, we see a box full of stories. Where people see stars in the sky, we see glimpses of stories. We’re incredibly misunderstood. It’s chaotic. It’s beautiful. It’s our world.
In my second year of college, I met my now best friend. She’s a writer, too. Eventually, the misunderstood find their way to one another.
I almost didn’t finish my creative writing minor in college. Sounds crazy, given how much I enjoy writing, but I simply wanted to be done with college. After five years, I wanted to remember what it was like to crawl in bed and rest my head on a pillow, as opposed to my laptop or a book. I also wanted to start the next part of my life. But, as I only had 12 credits left to finish my minor, I decided to stay an extra semester. After all, it was a semester strictly devoted to reading and writing. It was also another semester with my best friend and we’d get to graduate together. And what could be better than graduating college with your best friend?I decided I could hold off on the next phase of my life. I mean, after five years, what’s another couple months anyway? I was fortunate enough to take two classes with my best friend during our final semester, one of which was a memoir class. As creative fiction writers, we weren’t thrilled with the idea of a class devoted to nonfiction, but we enrolled in the class because of the professor — an amazing professor can make any class worthwhile. Given our friendship — similar experiences, similar dark, comical writing style — our professor allowed us to co-write our final essay. It turned out rather nicely and we even plan on expanding the piece as it was left a bit unfinished. But ask any creative writer and they’ll say creative works are never really complete. As a writing-based major, one hears a lot of “Well, what are you going to do with that degree?” The cynical response is typically, “Oh, I don’t know. Get a communications-based job to pay the bills and dig myself out of debt while writing on the side until I can (hopefully) get published someday.” It’s not like we writers expect to become the next J.K. Rowling. Several of us would simply settle for discovering the next J.K. Rowling. Editing and publishing books is the next-best thing to getting published in a writer’s world. Plus, we don’t write for the money. Of course it would be nice to make a living off of publishing books, but that doesn’t happen to many writers. We are storytellers. We care more about what we have to say than the paycheck our collection of words can provide us. We’re misunderstood but we are rational.