Actually, this series of writings that I started just for the sake of writing has now become satisfying to see new faces following it every day. Therefore, I want to thank everyone who occasionally stops by and takes a look.
I usually write my pieces in one go and don’t edit them. As a result, I’ve noticed not only many grammatical errors but also that the content has become somewhat mechanical. Since there are readers now, my goal from now on will be to engage the reader a bit more, to make them find pieces of themselves within the questions.
So, why do I write?
In my high school years, I didn’t like literature at all. The long essays I wrote by force didn’t have any meaning for me anyway. Looking at it from my perspective, it was killing my desire to conform to rules. Aside from a theater script I wrote with friends in elementary school, a magazine we sold to make some pizza money, and a small theater script I contributed to in high school, I had no connection with writing.
I started writing again during my university years, thanks to Facebook. Besides engaging in one-on-one arguments, I was writing about my thoughts and feelings on the things I researched. It was the desire to write that fascinated me. The fact that it was reciprocal fueled my desire to write even more. Despite being occasional, this practice I’ve been doing for years was improving my writing skills and readability. What was always lacking was technique.
I started writing again during my master’s degree, this time as a therapy. The depression I experienced when I entered a brand new country, a brand new world, brought my desire to write back. I was reading a lot during those years. In fact, reading is a big part of writing. Besides stories I never shared with anyone, I wrote articles, opinion pieces, and political writings that I shared with many people. Technique was still lacking, but the content was intriguing. I even received a job offer from a magazine. I didn’t accept it because my dreams were different. I dreamt of a career in engineering and science. My priority was my master’s degree. After that, I either stopped writing or wrote in my journal very rarely. Sometimes, I shared something on my blog.
Looking back, I realized that the quality of my writing had declined. Writing less and reading less was affecting the quality of my writing and the quality of my content, but my daily realities and a bit of laziness were preventing me from writing.
This year, I thought about writing again. After years of self-assessment for self-discovery, I realized that writing is a desire that comes from within me and shouldn’t be suppressed. Whether it’s good or bad doesn’t matter. Expressing thoughts, ideas, and dreams through writing relaxes me. Especially rereading and increasing research encourage me to express my desire to write more, but starting is quite difficult.
When I thought about how to start, I began writing based on the questions in a book whose questions I liked. The biggest reason for this was that there were a total of 365 questions, and there would be continuity. In other words, it would be good practice, and I started this practice. Even though I didn’t find the content to be great, I wanted to do this practice by sharing it. Surprisingly, this content started to gain attention. Of course, with attention, came anxiety about the content (even though it wasn’t wildly popular).
For my part, I achieved my first goal. To make writing a habit and express my irresistible desire. Now, my goal is to get better.
As I mentioned above, I find my content a bit mechanical. So, from time to time, I want to share exercises like ‘storytelling,’ ‘description,’ ‘character creation,’ etc. Feel free to point out how bad they are. My goal is to free my mind, which has been trapped in engineering patterns, with creative writing exercises, to continue my science fiction story that has been waiting half-finished for years, and to improve the technical part that I have ignored and avoided working on for years. Maybe in the end, I can find the answer to the question I still haven’t found: “What type of writing do I want to do?” My struggle against laziness, shared through sharing, might also support lazy souls like me.
I’m really curious about what I will see when I read this a year from now.
bahadirhancicek 
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