The Open Letter Series is a collection of open letters written to other people, ideas or activities that have taken place over the course of the last few days of uploading in both the public realm and in my personal life. What exactly is an open letter? An open letter is a letter which is often critical in nature that is addressed to a particular person or group of people but intended for publication or to be read by a large group of people. In this case, that is you, the reader.

Each open letter will discuss a different topic, in varying degrees of depth. From politics to personal issues, the Open Letter series aims to provide clarity on issues, create ideas or inspiration, or, in my case, to become a place of stress and thought relief. Nothing is safe from receiving an open letter, not shows or book characters, a class lesson or a provoking idea.

This week is the grand finale of all open letters… it’s been a good run and to be honest, I’ve had a lot of fun with it. Our last edition is going to be responding to the first thing I wrote in this course: What is Writing? Here we go, enjoy.

An open letter to writing:

Dear writing,

On the first day of writer’s craft, we were asked what is in our opinion My response was very dry, which, upon reading it again, makes me cringe (granted, reading all my writing again makes me cringe… I don’t know what I’m supposed to think about that). I said things along the lines of “Writing is fun” and moving on to talk about fiction. I continue by saying “Writing is complex” and “writing is embarrassing, there’s no way I’m reading this again.” And for me, that is true.

Writing is now for me, a mode of escape. I have never felt truly as free when I write for myself, knowing that no one else is going to read what I write. I used to write for others to read, but now I read for myself. How did this happen?

I’ve never really had the opportunity to write for myself, except for in writer’s craft. We had a notebook that was split into two parts: part one was for my wonderful and creative teacher to read, all those assignments were for him to read. The second part was for myself, and sometimes I used my side for calendars, but when I realised that this section was truly for myself, I vented. When your voice gets annoying, your paper never judges your words. So I wrote (and ran through three pens while doing it.)

Writing for yourself is liberating. And I feel like that’s something that’s so underappreciated about writing. When it comes to people who want to be writers, there’s this idea that you have to be incredibly good once you begin and doing so is an instant method to success. I think, and this is just me saying this, that we need to start writing for ourselves. For some reason, there’s something surreal about seeing the way that you’re thinking laid out for you on a page or in a document. They’re suddenly not just thoughts, but a tangible item that you can read at without judgement.

So, that’s what writing is to me. In the course of a few short months writing has changed from ‘embarrassing’ to freedom, but I think that what I’ve assigned to writing has become different. I write for myself now, not to get what I write online or to have it seen by others. I have so many documents on my laptop that are full of words that will never be read by anyone else, and I am more than fine with that. Writing destresses me now, it allows me to develop ideas and put my thoughts out on a page and I try to organize them. Writing has become my way of understanding myself, and all it takes is exposure.

I’ll post a photo of my original response to this question, for your enjoyment. Who knew that one could change in only four months?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an incredibly strong writer. Words don’t just come to me the way that they do others, but I’ve begun to understand what I am comfortable with writing. I like to create, but I don’t like fluff, which means my ability to write successful fiction may not be as great as it could be. I like fact and telling other people about what I’ve learned and discovered (such as my investigative report). Poems are fun, but not my medium of choice. 55 word fictions are too short for me, same with short stories with word limits. I need a good middle ground. Who knows, I may publish a novella one day. I’ve began to enjoy dabbling in script writing, because then I don’t have to go into detail with what I want things to look like and say “okay so here’s the mood, let’s get things that relate to that.”

I think I’m going to grow as a writer. I may not be a Rowling (that’s for sure), but at least I’ll be myself. After all, if the world needed another Rowling, you can just read the Divergent series (that is both a roast and a YA book suggestion that I’m only partially serious about. Try John Green’s Will Grayson will grayson if you want to have some real fun.

Best,

Johanna