This is from a paper that I recently wrote for a class. Therefore it is a little longer than normal.

I do not know why exactly I am a writer. Maybe I am one because my experiences made me one. Maybe I am one because I was born to be one. Whatever the reason, I know that my family as well as my school experiences are big part of how I am able to write.
My father has always been a huge supporter of my writing. He sometimes jokes (Or at least I think he’s joking. I am not altogether sure.) that when I get to be a famous author like J.K. Rowling, he and my mom will come and live in the mother-in-law apartment of my fancy house in the mountains. Before he started saying things like that to me, he was my first critic. He read over my academic papers for school as well as my poems and stories and taught me how to take constructive criticism well. And always, without fail, he will answer my questions about something out of the blue that I decided that I wanted to write about. In fact, he has come to learn that when I say, “I have a random question…” it means that I am writing something new.
I have always done well in English and it has always been my favorite subject, which is part of the reason why I’m an English major. It is also part of the reason why I am a writer, although I know that not all writers are English majors and not all English majors are writers…

In a way, I have always been writing. My sister tells me that I started when I was second grade. But of course, I started out as a reader. Or rather, a listener. I listened to Is Your Mama a Llama and Green Eggs and Ham and The Horse and His Boy. I listened and I imitated. I imitated my sibling’s ability to read, much like I imitate cursive before I learned it in school. My parents have a picture of me sitting next to my oldest brother in the living room, him in the rocking chair and me on the couch, both of us perusing magazines. His is a Nathional Geographic and mine looks like it’s about Astronomy. It looks like a snapshot of a teenager and a toddler fairly advanced for her age, until you peer closer and notice that my magazine is upside down.
As soon as I did start reading, I did it everywhere and any time I could. I read secretly after my lights were supposed to be turned out. I read on my way to church when I was supposed to be cleaning my room. And several times in school, I would become so engrossed in my current book that I would have to be reminded that class was starting. I read to draw closer to my family and friends and I would read to escape.
My sister recently told me that “when you like something, you really like it.” That is especially true with books. I read The Boxcar Children over and over until the first book of the series literally split in two. I read A Little Princess and The Secret Garden until I could have recited them verbatim.
It was The Secret Garden that really started me writing, I think. I copied each chapter into notebooks and when I got tired of that, I made up my own endings for Mary, Colin, and Dicken. Or maybe my writing started even before that. Perhaps it started in preschool when I would dictate stories to my dad and I would illustrate the little booklets he made with my scribbles when my neighbor, MaLia, and I created an invisible spy who had adventures in my backyard.
I might have always been a writer in some fashion, but I did not actually start considering myself one until I was in middle school, maybe even in high school. It started with poetry. I have to admit that they were not all that good, but I wrote them anyway. I pasted them on homemade candles and gave them as gifts for Christmas and showed them to my dance teacher. I once showed a poem to my sixth grade English teacher and he said, “Ooh! Someone’s in love!” I was so incredibly angry at what he said that I did not show anything to anyone for quite a while… But I got over it when I was entered into an advanced English class in eighth grade, which seemed more like a Creative Writing class than any English class I had ever taken before. In it, we were required to participate in NanoWriMo (National Writing Month) and write a good portion of a novel as well as the script part of a graphic novel. Then, I tried my hand at fiction, even though I still preferred poetry at that time.
At the beginning of eighth grade, I entertained the idea of applying for Denver School of the Arts for dance. I told my dance teacher this and she told me that I should also consider their Creative Writing program because I had a real talent for writing. I did not listen her because my heart was so set on dancing and I did not believe I was good enough at writing. I ended up attending a different high school as I figured out that dance would not make me happy in the end.
My freshman year, I discovered darkness and my writing became more meaningful and much better, in my eyes, as I had something hard and deep and dark to convey. I also started journaling. My first journal was very succinct, but my next couple became more involved and much longer. I had to ask for a new journal every year for my birthday because I filled them out so fast. The act of journaling introduced me to the genre of Creative Nonfiction, even though I did not realize that the genre had a name at that time.
During my freshman year of college, I took a Creative Writing class and the teacher talked about this relatively new genre called Creative Nonfiction. I immediately fell in love with it and found that I was more at ease with it than fiction or poetry. And in my first two years of college, I manage to get two pieces published in riverrun. I hoping to get published in national magazines, starting with the ones that are specifically geared for emerging writers.
The idea of getting published is a scary thing. Exciting, but scary. It means that I might be able to join the likes of Sylvia Plath and Joan Didion. Or I might not. But whether or not I get short pieces entered into recognized journals or get my novel which currently has only two chapters written, I will be a writer.

There are many reasons why I am a writer. Maybe it is because of my experiences. Maybe it is because I was born to be one.
Or, maybe I am a writer simply because I write.