Why Write Anyway?
I was first introduced to the power of writing in middle school when we read, The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, a literary classic that documents Frank’s experiences in the two years that her Jewish family hid during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Her father published her diary in 1947, after Frank died at the age of 15 in a concentration camp.
Years later, her diary has gone on to be recommended in many grade schools throughout the world, and lauded for shedding light on the horrors of the Nazi era. After reading Frank’s diary as a young girl, I tried to keep my own diary, but I was not disciplined enough to go beyond a few weeks, unfortunately. Also, my life just wasn’t all that interesting.
Nonetheless, I have always had a passion for writing. Up until recently, the passion was conditional because I mainly only wrote when I was upset. In fact, it was this conditional passion that led me to scribbling my thoughts down on a piece of paper, which eventually led to my debut novel, Respect Yourself.
As I have grown into writing, I now see writing as a way to inspire/connect with others because inspiration and connection is what I look for when I decide to read a book or a blog post. My experience from reading Anne Frank’s book and countless others shows me that writing transcends borders and time periods and can touch innumerable lives, especially when the writer is vulnerable and spills their heart out on each page. Accordingly, my answer to the question on “why write anyway?” can be summarized in these simple bullet points:
To find healing by documenting our frustrations;
To use our life’s struggles to inspire or connect with others;
To document historic moments in our lives;
To share knowledge or information we have learned from our life’s experiences or from conducting research; and
Because our stories and what we have to say matters!
I admit that when I first decided to write Respect Yourself and even leading up to its publication, the thought swirled in my mind that the story I told in the novel was really not worth telling. Even after its publication, I have had periods where I question the importance of certain things I wrote in the novel; however, I try to ignore those thoughts when they pop into my head because every word I wrote was a reflection of my feelings and experiences that are perfectly valid. The fact that some of my topics have deeply connected with my readers have validated my decision to include those topics.
Accordingly, I hope reading this post has convinced you that whatever story you have to tell matters. I understand that for many, writing can be a daunting thing, especially if you plan on publishing for the world to read. It is for this reason that we’ve decided to start our writing blog where we provide you with tips to help get you started writing, and guide you from there to the publication of your writing project.
In the blogs to come, I will provide you with tips on how to organize your writing, outlining tips for different genres of books, and tips on the publishing process from start to finish, with a focus being on self-publishing.
In the meantime, if you have any suggestions for future blog posts, please comment below, or send us a message!