I was told to cut close to the bone, but the bone is less dense than I thought. I tried to dig deep, but all I found was that shimmering image Joan Didion described so beautifully just on the surface of my skin. I didn't have to dig whatsoever to find the answer to "Why I Write." 

 I write to encapsulate the memories and feelings you can only try to put into words. I write so others can understand the emotions I undergo, the memories I have lived, and the struggles I have faced head to head. I push my writing to feel like an itch in the brain, where everything clicks into place. I like when it comes easily, when I don't have to stop and think. It feels like an electric pulse exits the tips of my fingers and flows into the keys, and creates a magical scene. I like when the harsh, gentle or bland details come into play. I like to describe everything like it was the first time I experienced it. I like when I get an idea and jot it down in my notes app, whether it is a one-sentence or novel-length thought engraved in my phone. I like discussing the uncomfortable and challenging the comfortable. I like finding a synonym for an adjective I have used too many times. I like finding a phrase that captures exactly what I am trying to get across. I like translating my ideas onto a page so everything looks a little clearer.

I write as a time capsule. Often, I find myself scrolling through my Google Docs. I scroll down to 2016, that fourth-grade writer. I scroll down to 2019, that seventh-grade writer. I scroll not so far away to 2022, that sophomore writer. I like to scroll. When just days or weeks go by, you can't see the upward growth, but when it's been seven years since I was a fourth-grade writer, it's all there, more clearly than ever. If and when I forget that I have improved, I scroll down to remind myself I just keep learning and growing. It is only up from here. I wrote through the lonely middle school years, and even if I didn't know the difference between your and you're, I love every piece my small, stubby hands have written. Right now, I may love or despise my writing, but when I am a published author, I will laugh and smile at how cute it was that I tried at all.

I write to avoid STEM. Writing can feel like a way out of the math and science this world offers. It's hard for me; it doesn't come to me like my friends who are choosing between Advanced Calc BC or, Linear Algebra AB or another complex math course. I just take precalc, and it isn't even pretty. It doesn't flow like when I sit in my stuffed animal-invested bed, moving the sentences in my mind onto the cracked computer screen. I like the flow like a salty sea.

I am not necessarily convinced I am a good writer; I just made my grandmother cry after I wrote a deep story about death in 6th grade and was told that I had a talent for my age. I ran with that comment. I ran all the way through the B+ I got on a personal essay I thought was the best thing man has ever created. I cried after that B+, as if tears rolling down my chubby, damp cheek would turn it into an A. As Didion mentions, it took me a bit to realize writing isn't about being good or bad. It's about that sparkling glimpse in my eye when an outline turns into a first draft and that smirk on my face when I get that powerful final sentence. It's about the process and every comma in between. It's about realizing math might not be my thing, but I have this cool other talent those nerds don't.