What Inspires Me in Life By Avery B.

What Inspires Me in Life By Avery B.

Nobody really had a good thing to say about me until I started writing. I mean, there were those fake compliments you give kids because they’re cute (That’s a beautiful butterfly you’re drawing! Look at you, riding that tricycle! That’s right, an octopus has eight legs, you’re so smart!) but nobody told me anything I had actually done with my brain was good until I wrote a poem in the second grade called My Brother is Horibal. It’s not like I was a child prodigy, I just listed all the horibal things my brother would do like screaming in my ear to wake me up and blaming me when he snapped the “K” off Mom’s keyboard. Plus it rhymed, that made it look smart. When I showed it to my mom, she printed a bunch of copies to send to everyone. And mind you, my mom never gave me a gold star for knowing a four-syllable word; she’d probably just tell me I was pronouncing it incorrectly.

When I was in the third grade, my teacher told us we had done terribly on our memoir essays. She actually sat down and read them out, pointing out everything each person had done wrong. The sole mercy she spared was that she didn’t name any names. You know, never getting any real praise must have made me frightfully insecure, because when she said, “But here we have one that’s actually good: The Time I Won the Jellybean Contest”, I sooner considered that somebody else had also won a jellybean contest—and also wrote about it in their essay—than I believed that she was talking about me. I vividly remember the distinct joy of hearing her praise my vocabulary and the effort I put into description.

That joy has only come a few times since then, but every time is just like the first. When my essay questioning why teenagers bother with dating literally made my teacher’s jaw drop, when my orchestra teacher asked me to give a speech at our winter concert, when my first short story was published in a magazine when I was thirteen. Every time I’ve ever been good enough to surprise somebody, it was with my writing. It’s the one thing I truly believe I can do well.

Once I’ve written my fill and made my magnum opus, I’ve decided I don’t want any more compliments. I don’t want people to tell me, “I read your book; it was amazing!” Nobody tells J.K. Rowling, “I read your books; they were amazing!” unless they were so stunned by her presence, they forgot the more intelligent thing they planned to say. The better-organized minds tell her, “We named our son Harry because of you! I got into Cambridge because ever since I was little, I wanted to study hard and be smart like Hermione! You taught my children to love reading!”

I don’t want to hear about myself anymore. If I’m still frightfully insecure after everyone who has ever read something I wrote telling me that it’s what I’m meant to do, then it’s something I’ll have to fix on my own. That’s not why I write anymore. All I want to do is touch other people. I want to make characters with whom loneliest people can identify. I want to share philosophies that they can look back on in real situations. I want to help everyone who’s ever felt like nothing find the inspiration to do what they love, and I want the world to be a better place because of their accomplishments. I don’t write for myself anymore; if I only do things for myself, then my life will mean nothing when I’m gone. I want to write for the world.

 

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