Writing is Not a Persuasive Essay
I like writing. But what’s really great about writing is making the setting. Sure, it sounds completely boring when you say it like they teach you in school. Setting – its like a word with no life, no influence, no creativity. Its one letter away from “sitting”, a form of idleness. I do not believe that this word does any justice to what it describes. I personally find all writing completely and utterly inferior in comparison to this phase, simply because of the amount of life involved, for lack of a better word.
What happens when you make a “setting”?
You can imagine entire worlds, worlds where anything can happen, where people do anything you want them to. You can breathe life into a character, you can give them friends, enemies. You can take life away. You can create friendship, companionship, loyalty. You can discover love. Don’t believe in love? You can invent it. It is the ultimate form of suspension of disbelief. Its like dreaming, only with full forced control. You can carve mountains, build cities, invent incredible machinery. You can discover that which no one else has found before. You can weave intricate character personalities. Give them talent. Give them likes, dislikes, favorite foods, inside jokes. Give them flaws. Give them imperfections that are so incredibly detailed that they will never be known by anyone else but themselves and you.
With a pen. With a notebook. With a laptop. With the margins on your history notes. You can feel power unlike anything else in the world. You can escape to a world that you have full control over. You can create your ideal world. You can create an imperfect world, but one that can capture the hearts and minds of yourself and others. You can recreate memories. You can pull at heartstrings. You can make the strongest cry, you can make the coldest blush, and you can give the ones in the most pain a way to smile.
This is what writing is. Writing is not a persuasive essay. Writing is not your college application. Writing is not a three-pronged thesis. Writing is the creation of a world.
And this world belongs to you.
