Sometime in the early ’80s…
I guess you can say I’ve always been positive. And I’ve pretty much always been talkative, too!
When I first started talking, really talking, I earned the family nickname of “The Chatterbox.” It wasn’t a derogatory name by any stretch. There was just no denying that as soon as I could talk, I had a lot to say about the world. The constant exclamations and outpouring of ideas were just impossible to keep up with. There was just so much going on inside my head that it had to come out somewhere.
At least that’s my explanation for it.
Now let’s fast forward a few years. Like fifteen.
Sometime in the late 90′s…
High school. Still a chatterbox. Still a pretty happy person. I really enjoyed my high school years. I had great friends, I had a zillion different hobbies, I had a really full letterman’s jacket thanks to track, and life was good. In school, I had good grades because underneath all the smart-assery, I’m kind of smart. But the smart-assery threw things off track. I was bored. I also, despite having great friends, didn’t want to stick out from the rest of the class for being a know-it-all. There were things you wanted to be known for back in those days, and things you didn’t.
Then I met my John Keating.
I had an absolutely awesome 11th Grade AP English teacher. She was passionate about everything she did, from dance to mentorship to coaxing a bunch of recalcitrant {see, I actually do use some of those GRE words!} teenagers through great works of literature despite our best efforts to avoid them.
I don’t think we ever saw eye to eye about the Stephen King novels I loved {seriously, if you haven’t read On Writing and you’re a writer, you’re wrong}, but she opened my eyes to the wonderful worlds created by great works of literature. And she taught us all how to create our own.
She taught us how to tell our stories, fact or fiction, seen through our eyes or created in our imaginations, so that they came to life.
She taught us to appreciate the stories that play with your imagination so viscerally you’re incapable of forgetting them. To let the words, images, and phrases jangle around in your head, prodding your thoughts just by being there. And to let those thoughts continue in that vein into something that can be made word.
Nowadays, I spend a lot of time looking at this…
I learned to write, and to love writing.
I still write. I write a lot. I write compulsively. Letters. Journals. Stories. The occasional book and short story. I write to turn pictures in my head into something concrete, to change vague colors and shapes into words and then, eventually, into a story. I write because I love to watch stories, thoughts, and ideas form in the white space on the screen in front of me. I write because the words come so quickly that I need to see them all together sometimes for them to make sense.
I blog because I love the feeling of conversation I have when I write letters. And that’s what I’m doing whenever I write these posts. I’m writing a letter to the internet. Sometimes I’m writing to specific people, sometimes I’m not. Sometimes I’m just writing to myself, to sort through an idea. Some of those posts get published, and sometimes things sort themselves out in my head and I figure I should keep them to myself.
I blog to teach myself. I blog to teach others. I write because it makes me happy. And if I’ve enriched your lives in any way by writing things you’ve enjoyed reading, if you comment or discuss my topics or just hit the little “like” button or if you do none of that at all, if you just think about some of the things I’ve said and maybe one little thing just makes a little more sense, then…well…that’s why I blog.
Self Portrait (c) KC Saling, 2013
Oh, and just for reference, here’s an updated picture. Sometime between the last one and now, thanks to all that running, I found my cheekbones again. So I felt like it was time for an update.
Your turn. If you’re a writer, why do you write? If you’re a blogger, why do you blog?
KCS
