Purposes.

My mother always told me that if I wanted to be a really great writer, I would need to write everyday. Over the years, I've tried to take her advice, but have often found myself struggling to get words down on paper. I attribute most of this to my current dislike for outlines, something I hope to change in the near future, but also I tend to box myself in on a specific style of writing and when the inspiration isn't there, I simply walk away.

So here is my first attempt at solving this problem. The inspiration for this blog came from my English 101 class in college. As I've always fancied myself a writer of fiction, I never spent much time simply writing about the ins and outs of my everyday, my past, and my future. Of course, English 101 is not a class for writing fiction. It's a technical class based around making sure you understand proper grammar, punctuation and the sort. My professor was clear in stating that our papers were to be written about things we knew a lot about. This wasn't a time to conjure up alternate realities.

Initially this drove me nuts. I struggled with the papers in the beginning, and the professors tough grading discouraged me even more as I saw -- written in that red ink that only teachers use when showing you your short-comings -- grades at the tops of my papers ranging anywhere from 65-73. I wasn't going to be able to pass my glass with these sorts of marks, but more than that, my pride as someone who had written since childhood and had been told on more than one occassion that I could be a great writer, was being crushed.

Steadily, my grades began to climb. I was doing well on my tests and soon the grades on my papers began to reflect my understanding of the things I was doing wrong. Excited as I was at my scholastic achievements, I became even more excited that I was learning new ways to write. My papers often involved childhood stories, which brought tears to my eyes several times while writing them.

So here I am, ready to give a long-standing medium a try. I'm in hopes that this will stimulate my creative mind and open it to a wider range of thoughts for my fictional endeavors.