Introduction to “Why. I Write” assignment.
When I began writing Why I Write, I struggled to decide what I wanted to say. I had several different drafts and approaches, ranging from why I struggle with traditional essays to why I document my ideas in the first place. Eventually, I realized that the process itself reflected what I wanted to explore: my tendency to consider multiple perspectives, revise my ideas, and return to old thoughts with new experiences. I drew from my notes app, childhood memories, and creative projects to examine how writing has shaped the way I think.
I think the essay answers “Who am I?” by showing how I approach the world rather than trying to summarize everything that defines me. Writing it helped me recognize the common thread connecting my many interests and potential career paths: I value exploration, resourcefulness, and the freedom to let ideas evolve. I also came to understand that my habit of changing directions can be a productive part of my creative process. The essay became a way to explain not only why I write, but how I think, create, and make sense of myself.
Audio to follow along:
Why I Write
My notes app holds a drawer full of loose threads that my writing keeps promising to deploy. Dig deep enough, and I find three lines of a song chorus that never got a melody, an outline for a school sports commentary club, a list of Wikipedia rabbit holes, and half a dozen careers I planned to pursue– each one’s research starting at 1:27 am on a Tuesday. There is no thesis in this drawer. No bibliography, no red pen, no Turnitin scanning for overlap. These are written for only one reader: me.
I know that isn’t what George Orwell meant in Why I Write– I have no political purpose or desire to make political writing into an art– or what Octavia Butler meant when she wrote about writing to sell a book and make history as a female African American science fiction writer. I don’t write for the express purpose of changing anyone’s mind except maybe my own. I simply make notes. I write to remember my ideas or events. I write to explore the multiplicity of perspectives; and I iterate, and revise, and reflect. And, of course, I write to show some creative expression.
I first started writing notes to myself when I was six. For whatever reason, I felt this intense need to be prepared, to be well-rounded, and to have a running document of everything I was thinking and doing. I would take my mom’s phone and practice typing out stories or ideas. I remember vividly this one time I had just gotten home from the pool and my hair was a rat’s nest when I borrowed my mom’s phone and created “KATARINA PS” on her notes app– where I thought “PS” stood for some private statement. I wrote my first lyrics there:
These three lines:
forget my times,
but don’t forget to stay.
(I didn’t say it was good.) Similarly, after I read Frog and Toad, I wrote a story idea about the adventure of a blue frog. After Knuffle Bunny was read to me, I made sure to name all of my stuffed animals and write those names down so that if I lost one, it would still have a name. If I couldn’t reach my mom’s phone, I impulsively grabbed a Sharpie and wrote on the walls or on the blankets or, most notoriously, on the back of the driver’s seat from my booster chair as we were in the rental car return line. At gymnastics, whenever we got our thirty-minute break between the two-hour segment and the ninety-minute one, I’d rush to my mom and write anything I’d been holding on to: funny jokes I heard or said, or routine ideas for when I got to make my own. I was convinced that if I didn’t get it down, I would never remember it afterwards. And still to this day, my notes app compounds, recording thoughts, observations, and left-field humor that might slip my mind.
Starting in fifth grade, though, I added research to the notes. Thoughts had to be explored, opposing angles considered. I began obsessing over what career path I would follow or enjoy. The basic question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, was now something adults took seriously when you gave a response. I could no longer say a Cirque du Soleil acrobat, maybe an actress, then a gymnast, probably a coach, perhaps a teacher, definitely an architect, and so on, without having a valid reason and supporting evidence. I noted down the qualifications, the personality types often associated, the skills to master, and the colleges that are best known for each. At one point, I considered being a career counselor, which, for someone who couldn’t pick her own path, was either a bold choice or a cry for help. Despite countless potential career switches, I can look back at my notes and find the through line and recognize my reasoning for each selection: hands-on, creative, and evolving. I didn’t want a fixed destination. I write for fluidity and multiplicity.
That is partly why argumentative essays take a while for me to call final. On school templates, they usually ask you to write your thesis first, then do your research, then find a possible counter-argument and explain why it would be faulty. Writing for me is always evolving. Formal feels final, and my need for iteration is stifled. So, when I am prompted to write an essay, I don’t find a thesis. I prefer to generate pages of angles. Give me an argumentative prompt, with one allowed counterargument that I’m then supposed to prove incorrect, and I can build a courtroom’s worth of evidence for either side. I contend multiplicity isn’t indecision if you keep notes– it’s exploring with a paper trail.
The act of iteration, rather than the finality of writing, is what generates my creativity and self-expression. An idea in my drawer doesn’t have to become anything at a particular time. A chorus without a melody can sit for months until I hum something else and I can combine the two ideas. My process is far from scheduled. It’s returning to old ideas with new eyes and finding ways to keep the original spark intact. Creativity, I’ve decided, is mostly resourcefulness: using whatever is lying around, including the version of me from last March, and making something unique.
Two years ago I noted an idea about someone building their career around escaping the life they have. It was repetitive in the romance movies I was watching, but I wanted to come up with something unique. Then one year ago, my friend was looking at colleges around the country for pilots. As I do, I started researching on his behalf and joked about the locations. I found some of them purposefully in boring areas so he would be motivated to get his license quickly and leave. It was the same oppositional thinking colleges used for architecture– give the students an ugly concrete brutalist building so that they would want to make something more interesting. Finally, it was at the start of the school year when I reflected on my original note about making a career out of leaving and connected it to pilots and runways. That’s when I wrote some lines, “you built a runway just to run away”, and crafted lyrics into a decent song.
Revisiting my previous ideas and notes is what let me create something better than I would have two years earlier. I was able to take my time and wait for the right moment to resume a train of thought. School, meanwhile, teaches writing like a public transit system. You pick a destination, wait at the designated spot, and judge your progress by a predicted arrival time. Every story is mapped, every delay is penalized, and you’re expected to reach the conclusion on cue. By that standard, I’m the MTA in New York, surprised at myself whenever I do show up on time. When I board my own train of thought, I throw out the time table. I don’t lay track in advance or steer towards a checkpoint. I build the train while running it– a horrendous business model for the public and the only test run I trust.
And the timetable gets faster while the tracks get narrower. After decades of The Great Gatsby classroom analysis, finding a new angle is nearly impossible. If just in the classroom people are writing about the same three symbols: the green light, the yellow car, and the shirts. Think of how few written variations there are left now– after the armies of students multiplied by the number of classes, amount of schools, and quantity of years. You are told to be original, then handed identical materials and templates. Today, tools that autocomplete a sentence before I’ve decided what it means make that predictability an even easier trap.
Templates run on prediction: the conclusion is chosen before the evidence is gathered. Imagine carrying that logic into a conversation. You calculate where someone’s sentence is going, draft your reply to a question they haven’t asked, and prepare to laugh before the punchline. If you already know the ending, there’s nothing left to find or explore. What I keep in the drawer is the opposite: ideas that take a season to grow, with conclusions I can’t predict because I have yet to think of the perfect one.
What I value? My library of notes, so I remember my ideas for the day they make sense. Exploring over concluding, so that my writing continues to evolve and improve. The resourceful creativity of making something from whatever’s lying around, and finding the jokes in my own detours.
This essay started in the drawer, too. It was a page of angles: one draft about why I can’t write essays, one about why I document, one about why I film, and one I abandoned for sounding too complaining. I didn’t know which would work until I tried them, which, etymologically, is the whole idea. And still while writing this, I paused to jot down the starts of new rabbit holes I’ll follow later. I’m told to trust the process, and I mostly do. I just don’t promise that it will run on time.
