Why I Write
By Cooper Haynes
“I had been paralyzed by the conviction that writing was an irrelevant act, that the world as I had understood it no longer existed. If I was to work again at all, it would be necessary for me to come to terms with disorder.” — Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Throughout school I was encouraged to write; I was fond of reading and of literature as a whole. I had won an award in my admittedly small school for my writing achievements. It seemed the clear next step for me was to delve deep into college, to pursue this sensitivity to words I had been given. Then that beast called Life sunk its jaws deep into my neck, bleeding me dry of all passion and creativity. Work, capital, stress; I had become a husk of the person I thought I was, of the person I wanted to be.
In times of despair, I find it pivotal to return to the landmarks of my personhood that have led me to where I am now. One of these landmarks is Joan Didion’s 1968 collection of essays titled Slouching Towards Bethlehem, titled after an excerpt from the poem titled The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats. Slouching for me was a rekindling of the passion that had been fostered years ago. I fell in love with language once again, I became obsessed with reading and writing as much as I possibly could.
Writing became a compulsion, a necessity for my wellbeing both physically and mentally. The longer I go without putting pen to page, I can feel the weight of lack pressing down on my shoulders, digging into the back of my mind. And so I would write furiously. Notes to myself, poems, stories born and lost, anything. I feel so much passion, intensity for the art of writing; it is a fundamental part of who I am.
Get Cooper Haynes’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
After I would estimate a year of off and on, inconsistent scribblings and jottings of things down, I began to force myself to sit for an hour minimum at a time and commit myself to one idea, to a novel that would mark my debut as an Author, a “real writer.” I reached the thirty-thousand word mark before it fell flat on its face, and I into a void of despair. Nothing felt new, nothing felt meaningful. Every word I had written had been written before, every idea in my head was a shadow of a larger mind than my own.
In short, writing became, once again, an irrelevant act.
Simply put, I was not ready. I am not ready. These thoughts, these worlds, these ideas in my head, they are blocked behind 18 years of inexperience. The words are trapped behind walls I have yet to climb. I, simply, could not write. A realization hit me, a fear that even if I did, could write, who would read? This world as I understood it, lost in my own miasma of literary obsession, was one I was viewing through ink-colored glasses. Fewer and fewer people read, and even less read voluntarily. What audience is to be gained by the ramblings of an 18 year old about the importance of holding on to an expensive, time consuming, demanding art form? I was faced with a choice.
Accept this part of me as a relic from a time where it mattered more; understand myself as some kind of living time capsule, a benign organ left over from decades, centuries past. Or, I spend the rest of my life selfishly fighting for people to listen, to read, to hear what I have to say for the sole reason of I want to say it.
I have chosen the latter.
I plan for this to house my ramblings, to be where I go to give the ideas that desperately need out of my head a crude splashboard of input on which to truly build the skill and experience I need to pursue success in my Medium (pun absolutely intended).
I will write, hopefully you will read, and what happens next, well, hasn’t happened yet.
