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plastictreehugger · 2 years ago

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First Sentences and Other Expectations

I find that whenever I write, no matter what for, I can’t put anything on the paper unless I have a first sentence. An essay, a story, a poem, anything…my brain won’t let me continue unless I have the perfect first sentence; my mind curbs any progress; my fingers move by themselves and always seem to find their way to the Backspace key over, and over, and over, until nothing's left. Looking back, I’ve probably eradicated multiple novels’ worth of opening thoughts because they weren’t right. Some have called me a perfectionist, but I don’t care for perfect things – my hodgepodge haircut made with safety scissors and class notes with more doodles than words can attest to that. I think my problem is that I care for meaning. I don’t care if my writing isn’t flawlessly crafted – I am human after all – I just want it to mean something. I’ve come to multiple teachers with this trouble – every teacher I’ve ever had to write an essay for – and every response I’ve gotten so far has been some variation of Well, sometimes you just have to write. They all say it in that sweet tone only humanities teachers seem to muster that makes me think that maybe this time will be different, but it never is. I seem to be better at writing emails begging for extensions than I am at doing what I’ve been assigned to do. With no solutions for truly solving the problem, I am opting to try to find the root. Maybe it was all those years of English classes that I held so dear to my heart that was the complication. Even after the zeroes and the F’s on my report cards, I still haven’t let go of my love for it. My first time reading a real novel for school in seventh grade, my excitement spilled out of me; I couldn’t contain it. Finally, I could breathe – no more sucky state-test-prep packets without substance – we were reading something real. I felt the same for my first creative writing project. Maybe that’s where the problem started, the years and years of English classes for telling me that good stories start with good hooks. They’re what make the reader want to keep reading. Now I fear that without that first sentence, nothing I write will ever be worth reading at all. Maybe it was the first time I won an award for my writing. I won an award though I never thought I deserved one. I was in disbelief when I saw the Congratulations! sitting in my inbox – I didn’t realize that I was capable of making something that was actually... good. Even as more congratulations flooded in from my friends and family, I don’t think I ever really processed it. I thought my stories were subpar at best, nothing noteworthy. I still cringe showing them to people who ask and refrain from ever reading over them. Since then, I’ve never finished a piece of creative writing. The furthest I’ve gotten is three paragraphs. That seems to be my limit before my whole body freezes and the deletion cycle begins again. People ask me everytime award season comes around if I’m going to submit something this year. I might…depends if I can finish something, I laugh. I know I won’t – I think I’m scared of writing. Maybe I’m scared that if I write something else, everyone will realize what I knew all along – I was never good at writing. Maybe it was my mother. My mother was so proud of me that she cried when I called her to tell her that I had actually won something for what I had written. She told me that I was a writer just like her. That moment burned a mark on my mind and never seemed to leave. I wondered if one day she’d realize that she made a mistake. She is a real writer, nothing like the facade I feel I have put on. The word writer always terrified me; her calling me one did nothing to ease my anxiety. Maybe I was scared that I’d disappoint her, that she’d realize I was never any good at writing, that I wasn’t like her after all.

Maybe it was the stories themselves. Even this essay was one attempt of many. Many. From familial problems to the best night of my life to old regrets – no ideas stuck. I have pages of first lines that weren’t good enough; I stared at the words hoping that maybe they would rearrange themselves in an order that made sense. Everyday for the past month, I wrote a new first line until the document was ten pages long, but the blaring siren of fears filled my mind. I couldn’t shake them and replaced that document with a new one – this one. I cried with frustration more times than I can count. All I needed was the right few words, and I couldn’t understand why that seemed so impossible. Maybe I’m not capable of coming up with something good enough to be written at all.

Or maybe it was never anything at all. All stories are just words no matter how good or bad. I placed so much weight on what I should be writing that I forgot how. Until I decided to write about what was happening to me when I tried. The alarms in my head slowly faded as I laid them on the paper. Giving them a voice seemed to quiet their neverending nagging. As each paragraph concluded, I began to realize what all those English teachers meant when they told me I just had to write. I was doing it – I was writing. The words first trickled out of me, then began to pour, then burst out of me like a dam that couldn’t contain the water anymore. As the words spilled through me, I realized that the only voice I could hear was that of the sentences I was putting down. The expectations of those around me, the longing to be meaningful, the terrifying title of writer – none of it seemed important anymore. I just had to start. I had to write the words down, not the first perfect sentence, just the words, the other words – the second and the third sentence, and then more and more.

Maybe all those teachers were right – sometimes you just have to write.

#this is a legitimate essay i submitted for an english assignment

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