writing & perspective

i used to want to be an author. isn’t that most readers’ dream? i used to scribble down different ideas, jot down all these snippets of stories i never ended up writing. a quote, a character, a legend, a world–i had journals filled with them, notes on my phone, word documents tens of pages long.

i never did finish writing a story. but i did develop a writing style.

i think from early on, i was always more of an effusive writer, and you could tell from my favorite novels, too. poetry, prose, flowery, train-of-thought writing–it was my favorite. i was always told that i used a lot of passive writing, but to me, it was just…more natural. more elegant? more beautiful, maybe. i use dozens of synonyms to get my point across (clearly) and repetition is my favorite literary device…but the grammatical logistics of how i write are far from what defines my writing style.

i think my writing style has always been a little messy, a little emotional, and very much focused on small, minute details. i write in very lengthy sentences that can go on forever and then i just–stop. i use convoluted descriptions to pinpoint emotions and experiences, and sometimes the sentence itself makes very little sense, but the emotion you receive is there all the same. emotion has always been the core of my writing style

the style for my essays and academic papers has been very much similar to the writing style i used to write stories and fairy tales. i was never very good at strictly formal writing, but i think it genuinely makes me a little proud whenever a professor comments on it. (my freshman writing seminar professor once noted “you write with such élan” and I think it made me a little less self-conscious about my approach to academic writing).

so what does perspective have to do with it? and perspective on what?

perspective on life, my friends, because we’re tackling the Big Topics today. kind of.

we all know perspective impacts writing. and yet, why does it feel as though oftentimes it’s my writing affecting the way i experience my life? whenever i feel a certain mood, the need to write it down and phrase it with the perfect words arises. i write it down in a way that makes sense or–if i don’t know how to phrase it–i write in a way that i feel effectively delivers the same emotions to those who read my writing. (i do have a finsta, and it is oftentimes a mess of words and emotions like this post is turning out to be). that is to say, i think that awareness of emotion in my writing has leaked into an awareness of the emotions i feel on the daily.

and there are moments, sometimes, where nothing in particular is happening, but i pause and i think, “would this be a scene i would write?” when the answer is yes, suddenly i feel that much smaller in the universe, too aware of the details that would go into writing the scene that i perhaps may not have noticed before. the way my fan blows my bangs, the sunlight filtering through the curtains–especially with quarantine, there have been many of those moments, and each time it feels like so much more because of these details that i suddenly see under a microscope.

it makes me appreciate those moments a bit more.