About Writing

Writing is similar to carving wood. You know what you want to create, but there is no distinguished shape in the wood that you have right now in your hands. Thinking hard through trial and error, you carve the object little by little with the knife called “words” and you give it a shape that you want.

I have liked writing since childhood. Many stories naturally came into mind and I sometimes wrote them down. When I was 12, I remember saying that I wanted to be an essayist in the future. But, after going on to junior high school, I did not make much effort to write a lot.

Yet sometimes, I get caught up in a swirling vortex of emotions. I cannot help keep thinking about a particular thing and I cannot get it out of my mind. At such times, I have jotted my emotions and thoughts down as a short note, or just let my thoughts wander around in my head without expressing them in words. I have not tried to capture most of the thoughts that occurred to me in my life and left them as they are. And they had always disappeared without a trace.

I thought, however, my thoughts were more special this time, since I am studying abroad. They are completely different in quality from the thoughts I had before, and probably I will not think in the same way in the future. I may go abroad again, but at a different age, with a different way of thinking and sense of feeling, and for a different purpose. So I need to seize them. I must not lose my thoughts and emotions without realizing it. That’s why I started to write essays. But it has to be something distinctively different from just a record of my experiences abroad. I want to cut out the world I see in my unique shape using the scissors called words. I want to because writing is the best way for me to organize my thoughts, because I enjoy writing, and because I need to acquire better writing skills if I really like writing.

Why do we write? One answer would be to understand yourself. Sometimes it is not easy to know exactly what you are feeling yourself. That is why you have to actually hold a chunk of wood, face it patiently and carve it with the knife called words. It is a time-consuming task -  but at the same time, it is a wonderful time to listen to what your senses say. And now I have found again how much I like this process of putting my sensibility into words.