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My love for writing
Passionate, exciting, inspiring: writing.
The hardest Christmas of my life was 2008. It was the Wednesday morning of the last week of school when the news reached me. I watched as my family broke down in a sea of sadness. The death of my cousin shook us all, and especially me. Nothing I did could ease the terrible pain, so instead I put my feelings on paper.
We all have our ways of coping. Mine was engulfing myself in a pile of ink stained pages. Every word I scribed lifted another fraction of pain from my mind. Writing got me through the months that passed and provided the path to regaining some happiness.
I can remember the first time I ever picked up a book. I was seven years old and I had a T.V. filled life that was beginning to cloy. One day, when I was at the end of my tether, I was browsing through the forest of bland paperbacks when something red caught my eye. It was the first in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. I sat on the floor for hours reading about the world inside Hogwarts School for witchcraft and wizardry. I instantly fell in love with reading. From that day onwards I have been hooked on fictional worlds, reading about the highs and lows of fantasy characters. That book changed my life
The series not only provided the hiding place I craved, but it sparked a fire in my heart; the writer in me. I was inspired by the woman who could turn a simple idea into a piece of genius entertainment.
The real value of writing is putting ideas to paper. As a teenager in school, it is difficult to find a person who shares my interest. To the youths of today, literature is a devise used to ruin their lives. It is the textbooks they use, the essay’s they write and the exams they take. It is the bane of their lives.
However, there are people my age who do give it a chance. Every day the youth website Spunout.ie posts a number of articles written by the youths of Ireland. The articles are generally anonymous. They can be entertaining, informative or even life saving. This website is one that represents what the writing community is all about: getting your work published so that the world can enjoy its contents. Spunout has given me the opportunity to show the world my skill, to allow other people to enjoy what I enjoy. For that, I am so very grateful.
I have heard people say that writers make way too much money. The truth is we need writers. As Anaïs Nin once said: “The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say”.
Just a number of weeks ago, I was reading the last Harry Potter book for the second time. I sat back and thought about the miracle of J.K. Rowling, the woman who changed me as a person. She gave me a path to follow and a place where I could belong. She introduced me to writing, my number one love.
Tomorrow I will finish yet another story. The day after that I will finish yet another diary entry. When I think about all that I have written over the past few years one thing is for sure, it is what I do, what I crave. As I lay down that Harry Potter book for the second time I thought about my cousin, and for the first time since his death, I smiled.
By: Robert Connon
