My english education up until the age of ten composed of British educational ideals and Chinese assumptions. It is safe to say english is not my native language. When I first learned I would be moving to the United States, my parents enrolled me in a supplemental english class. The course did not help me in reading and writing. I learned a few vocabularies, curse words, and how to speak without an accent. The tutor had forgotten the written language was equally important. In his defense, we were the loudest and uncontrollable group of kids in the school. Any tutors would toss his lesson plan and curse under his breath about the bratty Chinese kids. Four days after my tenth birthday, I was flown to my new home.
My first real challenge in writing was to generate a short essay at the elementary school district office. It was the way the big scary white lady used to assess my language skills. I had to write about my interests. I believe I wrote something along the line of watching an obscene amount of television and eating. I hated writing, and much less in a language I was not familiar with. I was embarrassed at my limited vocabulary. I mixed up words such as ‘snack’ and ‘snake’. I still do quite a bit of snaking. The lady studied my writing as if it was a recently discovered long lost text written by Shakespeare himself. Apart from the snake thing, which my parents found amusing, there were no major errors that would earn me a place in the lowest ESL level class, just the second lowest.
During freshman year in high school, I was required to write in different styles of prose and poetry. I was instructed to write about anything I wanted to. I had no idea what I wanted to write about and I still hated writing. I was astonished when I earned one of the highest grades in the class for the haiku assignment. The subject matter was how much I hated writing haikus. My instructors appreciated the irony. I needed to feel strongly about a subject to write creatively.
The beginning of my college career was all pictures, numbers, and fragments. Computer programmers did not need to know the English language; that was my understanding until I encountered the technical writing class. There was class where I had to write about something I was interested in. The problem being I no longer aspired to be a code monkey. To try to feign interest in something was by far the most painful thing in the world. That was the moment when I regretted not taking up an offer to become an english major.
I tried hard as I did but could not get myself to pass all the required classes for a degree that was then meaningless to me. Failure wells up a lot of complicated emotions. These emotions are hard to articulate and sift through. Two years ago I started a blog as an outlet. I opened a floodgate of incoherent ideas and words. It was the first time I was able to articulate my ideas. I wrote in a manner opposite of when I wrote for school. I was not critical of how my words came out. I did not censor myself when I came up with ideas. I did not care about my horrible grammar and the wrong words were not corrected. I wrote about the way I felt. I wanted to write about what mattered most to me. I don’t hate writing. I hate writing with no purpose at all.
As a writer I can be easily distracted. I often stop myself in mid sentence thinking about the most fitting word. When I think of the right word, I will have lost the idea altogether. I never made the connection between free writing and delivering good composition. By the time I finish spilling out ideas I will be too lazy to edit it into something readable. I often find myself staring at the computer screen with a million words floating in my head. By writing the words down, I put my thoughts into perspective. This week I found the sound that keeps my mind focused was of my pencil scratching on a pad of paper. It has its own unique rhythm. It is the single white noise capable of drowning out all the distractions in the world. It is the noise that liberates me from my critical self and let my ideas come out.
