Writing

(Kind of stating the obvious, I know, to make a title of a post be "writing.")

So, now that I'm finished with school, I'm ready to forget almost everything, but the one thing I hope to remember a lot about is the literature. This last year in Senior English, we read some pretty amazing poetry, short stories, and novels. And I use the term "amazing" as it was originally intended to be used - not amazingly good, just something that amazed me. Don't get me wrong, some of it was great stuff, namely Pride and Prejudice. But some of it was terrible. I think the worst was probably the poetry by Thomas Harding. I don't know if you've ready any of his poetry, but the three poems that were in our book (The Darkling Thrush, The Man He Killed, and "Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave?") were all about despair. (In all honesty, I'm not sure why that surprised me. Harding believed that the only place to find utopia was in human nature, but he also believed human nature was the worst thing to happen to the world. But that's not the point.)

I'm sure a lot of people will probably say, "It came right from his heart!" and I do not doubt that it did. That's all very well when writing comes straight from the heart - no doubt it's more interesting to read - but there's something else to consider about writing: not where it's coming from, but where it's going to. Before you sit down and write something, think who's going to read it. What if you write a tragic story about a family breaking up that comes from your heart - and the person to read it is a kid who comes from a family on the brink of strife? What is he getting out of your writing? Maybe that there can't be a good outcome for his own situation. Of course that isn't a message you meant to portray, but that doesn't mean he isn't getting that out of it.

In closing, I would simply like to say this: Writing is like drinking. If it's not done responsibly, you'll only end up hurting the people around you. Write responsibly.