[Tyr Zalo Hawk]: 712.Essays.My Writing Mirror

I am a writer. As surprising as it may be to some though, I wasn’t always this way. A really long time ago I gargled, cooed, cried, and laughed in order to express the entire scope of human emotion and every conceivable thought. A few years later I learned that by combining ‘letters’ in the appropriate order I could create these mystical things called ‘words.’ That’s where this whole mess started and, if I’m lucky, where it’s all going to end too. Back then, words were more of a form of communication that my instructor’s and society forced upon me. They started by telling me that if I couldn’t conform that I wasn’t good enough to function in society and might as well just sign my life away to the circus where I could put to better use. After this beating of principle into my mind, they handed me a pencil, taught me how to spell, and then expected me to keep doing it for the rest of my life. Heck, as the years passed they even ordered me to write more and more, insisting that I was never good enough and that I never would be in the eyes of the world. Ok, so maybe I left out a few things in-between, but you get the gist of the story: Me and writing started off as enemies. Now, I can’t imagine anything around that’s more useful and entertaining. How did that change come about? Well, that’s a tale that requires a bit more explanation.
My entire view on writing changed in the early months of the year 2004, which was right at the tail end of my middle school days. Remember that, it’ll become important to us later on. Elementary school. That’s where I believe everyone’s career in writing really begins, and I was no particular exception. I dreaded writing assignments, grammar, punctuation, English class, similes, metaphors, hyperboles, and alliteration, all of it. It was the bane of my existence. It wasn’t that I had bad teachers, or that I couldn’t learn all of it and use it well, it was more that I just didn’t like doing it at all, much like I am with Math nowadays. Thank you letters were a hassle, spelling tests were torture, essays would kill me, and when April came along? “SOMEONE SHOOT ME” was my approximate response. Overdramatic? A tad… but what 2nd grader isn’t? I digress. This pattern of thought continued for a period of approximately 8.5 years. During that time, I discovered the wonders of reading with C.S. Lewis and his Chronicles of Narnia, the importance of which I wouldn’t realize until a fateful day in mid February of 2004. On that day (the specific date of which has been lost), I discovered that I enjoyed writing. It was a miracle to me, that I could just discover that I liked something which I’d previously thought was handcrafted torture passed down from elderly Chinese men. This revelation came to me through the introduction of online text-based role-playing into my otherwise colorless life. I found a link between reading and writing, a medium through which I could become the storyteller and entertain people like myself for countless hours. By the end of my first two posts, I was hooked. Writing had changed from something I loathed to live with to something I couldn’t live without.
This divinely inspired chain of events led to an insatiable thirst for writing that has yet to subside. I went from avoiding writing whenever possible to turning out poems during my spare minutes, writing stories with friends for hours on end, and even finding that a 4 page essay wasn’t a hassle so long as you took it in the right light. Assignments didn’t have to be the avatars of anarchy, letters were fun to fill up with facts about my life, and worlds unimaginable were suddenly visiting me in daydreams. I was freed from my chains, and given the tools which would shape my life. Today, I write everything from poems to plays, articles to advertisements, and snippets to stories. I have become a writer, through and through, and I can only hope to be one for the rest of my life.
Because of my drastic changes in attitude towards writing, my process changed as well. I was originally the sort of kid who just followed instructions. I took whatever the teacher said “write a 5 paragraph essay” and just did it. Opening paragraph, 3 detail paragraphs, and a closing paragraph. Once I had gotten all five down, I was done. There was none of this fancy ‘revising’ and ‘rechecking’ things before I turned it in. No, that only happened when necessary. However, once writing was dragged from the depths of the underworld and neatly seated into the halls of Olympus I knew I had to give this whole system a run for its money. And thus began Tyr’s fight against the mechanization of the writing process.
It began simply enough by testing how bendable the rules of the English educational system really were. You know, throwing in a bit more of my own voice than might normally be required, adding in an extra paragraph or extending the page length of assignments by half a page or so. The little things that most teachers will look past if it’s good enough. That’s about when High School and I were introduced. A place where extending limits was the name of the game, where more was expected from me than the barest minimum, and where I could feel free to throw away 5’s, and outlines, and little note cards, and just write. I scrawled out essays the night before they were due with brilliant results, I improved my entire writing scope by leaps and bounds over the course of months. Then subtler nuances of grammar, punctuation, and all of those glorious words flooded in the moment I opened the gate for them. Before I knew it, everyone knew when it was me writing. I was yanked out of Basic English within the first two weeks because my teacher assumed that some sort of huge mistake had been made. I’d developed a system that not only worked for me, but worked so well that I was recognized for it, and it’s one that I continue to use to this day. Well, for essays at least. I’ll get to the rest later.
First you take 3 cups procrastination, because nothing says ‘I wanna write a brilliant paper’ like needing to finish it in 4 hours, and throw them into the bowl. Next, glance at the assignment sheet, take careful notes on the basics, and start throwing your ideas into the pot. Continue throwing things into the mix whilst stirring for several hours. Add a touch of dictionary and thesaurus for flavoring. Allow the mixture to cool. Check over the paper for any last minute markups and then turn it in first thing in the morning. A simple, perhaps archaic method towards the project of writing essays, yes, but that how I work the best. I just write and write and write and whatever comes out is either good enough to make it into the final draft or is steadily revised whenever a better way to convey the idea crosses my mind. To be quite honest, that’s how I write EVERYTHING. My paragraphs/stanzas/words tend to arrange themselves in my head beforehand, even if I don’t know what I’m going to do with the paper/poem/letter at all, and then I just fill in as I go. Don’t tell Kelly, but that’s how I wrote this paper too. When I write I just plain write, and only once I feel I’m completely done with whatever I’m writing do I even stop and look at what I had/planned to do originally. There are ‘better, more organized’ ways out there, I know that already, but I don’t like them. They require too much of me, and always criticize my work at every step of the way. I’m painting a masterpiece, not building a card tower for crying out loud; I don’t need to plan for everything all at once. I just do and then it suddenly is. That’s my method, and that’s me.
So, where does this all leave us? It leaves us with 4 pages of me and nothing from the audience but currently unforeseen reactions. We, the writer, have gained little to nothing and y’all, the readers, have only learned so much. However, now that you know my humble writing origins and my lax method of writing, perhaps you shall come to understand a bit more about why I can, and often do simply state that: I am a writer.

© Tyr Hawkaluk (2004-Present)