anyone willing to proofread an essay?
anyone willing to edit this for grammar? thanks if you do (=
I decided I was going to be an author when I was three years old. Not even school age and I knew nearly as much about life as I do now. Granted, my exact words were “When I get big I’m gonna make books.”, which I’ve been told countless times as my mother’s eyes well up with tears for the sweet little baby I’ll never be again. In consolation for growing up, the ambitions of that sweet little baby live on in the still relatively sweet, but far from little sixteen year old I am today. I am a writer through in through, replete with the stereotypical neuroses and hang ups and the insatiable love of words. I read, I write, I think about what I’ve read, I think about what I’ve written, I think about what I will write, and I do little else.
My parents worry that I’ll never amount to anything because all I’m concerned with are words. I could write a biography on F. Scott Fitzgerald based entirely on previous knowledge but my math homework makes me queasy. I conceive dramatic back stories for all the families that visit my current place of work, The Holyoke Merry Go Round, but I can only rarely be bothered to get down to the sundry duties officially associated with the job. All of this concerns them hugely.
They think that wanting to write professionally is a nice idea, but that I should develop some kind of a back up. Their concerns are understandable. Nobody wants to put their child through college only to have them move home educated but unemployed after four years because they went after what they wanted, as opposed to what was practical. But practical has never been my style. I can’t live within the constraints of practicality. I won’t delve into the clichés of “marching to the beat of my own drum”, or “thinking outside the box”, but they do apply. I believe if everyone lived their lives exactly the way they wanted to, and chased the dreams that mattered to them, this world would be a lot better off. I love to write. I will never be able to make a living any other way happily, and if I can’t do something happily, I’d rather not do it at all.
I adore writing. I’ve been writing poems, short stories and even bits and pieces of potential novels for as long as I can remember. It’s the only career I’ve ever seriously considered. As the years passed and my youthful interests varied, passionate but fleeting, there have been a few other side projects, like marine biologist or first female president, but I’ve always come back to writing. Words are what make sense to me, what comfort me. Creative Writing is my best outlet for an overactive imagination, and I use it to the fullest. I admire good writing, and I endeavor to read as much of it as possible, not only for my enjoyment but for the improvement and development of my own writing. I want to use a gift, one which I humbly but truly believe I possess, to bring enjoyment and new thought to this world. It is when I am writing that I feel most alive, and most like my true self, and there is nothing else I can see myself doing with my life, or studying in college.
In life I am introverted and unassuming. In writing I can be anything. Boastful and bold or daring and courageous! The deepest caverns of my mind are explored through the words I put onto paper and I am endlessly surprised by the ideas that stem from the mind of a teenage girl to whom nothing particularly interesting has ever happened. My mind is on constant creative overload and the relentless flow of writing is its result. Descartes declared, “I think therefore I am”, but for me it is, always has been and always will be “I write, therefore I am.” Expressing myself through words has been such an integral part of my life that it has become a defining characteristic of my personality. I will always be a writer. I am daughter, sister, friend, and writer. Someday mother and wife may add themselves to that list but writer will never leave it.
My future is not tightly defined within carefully drawn constraints, but I rather like it this way. Without a goal set in stone there is plenty of room to grow and change. There are certain things which I know. I know that I wish to study Creative Writing. I know that I wish to improve my natural writing abilities. I know that I writing is the only career I want. Outside of that, much of my future profession is very vague, but that is of little trouble, however, because I truly believe that I will be a successful writer, in whichever medium. I truly believe that I will be able to achieve my dream. I truly believe that I won’t realize my parents’ fears. And I truly believe that with the passion I possess I will be an undoubted success in the life I chose those nearly fourteen years ago when I proudly announced, “When I get big I’m gonna make books”.