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Why Creative Writing?
(College Bound 2012)
by Elizabeth Horner
Why Creative Writing? A common question I have been asked as I
get busy with college applications.
Here’s my thinking. Our body is made up mostly of oxygen, carbon,
hydrogen, etc., and when we die, our bodies will decompose and become
worm-food. I want something, SOMETHING I can leave behind that
says who I was and what I cared about… and share the knowledge I have
gained in life with the next generations.
I believe that written works can be very powerful --- the author’s
thoughts and feelings, even if he has been buried hundreds of years in
the past, can continue to effect change, shape the present world, and
set new things in motion.
I look forward to learning from the best educations in the field as I
pursue a career that will advance my passion for written works. I
want, primarily, to be an author of fiction books and continue to
expand my opportunities to write newspaper columns. My first published
article was at age 9, when the then editor of the Daily Advocate
Newspaper in Greenville, Ohio, Mr. Bob Robinson approached me for an
article. He wanted a youth’s perspective on Independence Day. My
article became the lead story, top half of the front page of the
newspaper’s “Special Independence Day Edition” in 2003. I never
stopped writing since then.
While I am interested to test my skills in various genres such as
producing a movie script, psychology and history books, I must profess
my love for fiction. Why creative fiction writer? What is
it about the world of make-believe that draws me closer to it than
becoming a journalist or biographer?
I believe that it is very hard to be impartial in writing. There have
been many books written about Christopher Columbus. Some paint him as a
hero, the explorer that opened the door to American democracy, yet to
others he was just another misguided idiot, who spent his dying days
still believing he had found a western route to the Indies. There’s
probably some truth to all those claims. The crew of the Nina, Pinta,
and Santa Maria all had flaws, just like the people sitting in comfy
chairs centuries later who felt they had the right to write about them.
There is none of that confusion in fiction. The author is “god” of his
own universe and is therefore able to speak basic human truth,
disguised as fantasy. Orson Scott Card said it best: “I think that most
of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not ‘true’ because
we’re hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human
nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities
that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our
own self-story….”. And if my dream becomes reality, I hope to
unveil my first fictional novel, “The Problem with the Prophecy”
hopefully as I head to college in 2012.
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