(Originally written in 2018)

I am not a writer…

Consequently, I spent much of my young adult life avoiding it… but in my adolescence this wasn’t the case. Writing short stories with my brothers and sharing them among us was a highlight of my youth. What’s funny was that it seemed our plots didn’t change much over time. It was the usual imagining of young, but soon-to-be men, to tell compelling tales about how we were all invincible heroes with superpowers, drove nice cars, and had incredibly beautiful wives.

Photos of me and my brothers at Sedgefield Apartments.

Yet, because even in our earliest years I think this is what we all wanted for ourselves, every story still captivated us as we read them aloud. I excitedly listened to my brother’s stories, and eventually I stopped writing my own, feeling they weren’t as interesting.

Many years later, I signed up for AP English in my senior year of high school. Despite learning a lot from the course, my results of every paper that I turned in was really discouraging… and although I enjoyed the class, my teacher didn’t hesitate when presented an opportunity to unravel the errors of my essay in front of the class. Writing didn’t mean much to me then, because I had already made up my mind to become a Mathematician, and therefore I mistakenly felt there was no need to waste my time doing whatever a writer does!

I fancied writing in a way that some might identify to be a “technical” style; but what I was writing wasn’t technical. In fact, study.com says technical writing is defined to be “a practical style of writing that helps the readers complete a task, become familiar with a product or natural phenomenon, or complete a procedure.” I did none of these things in my writing. Instead, I committed to what I now jokingly like to call a “sequipedalian prose,” which is basically just using really long words where they aren’t necessary.

“Good job, but you can focus on being more concise,” she said, “and stop using 50 dollar words for 5 dollar sentences.”

Often she would ask me what the words I used meant, and I would shamefully admit my ignorance. She’d remind me that she was getting me ready for college, but I didn’t realize she was sharing with me an important facet of scholarship — sharing truths with unmistakable clarity. There are many people who sound really intelligent when they speak, but I also noticed there are others who subscribe to a more efficient economy of words. In fact, I later realized how poor usage of words in this way can potentially illuminate insecurities.

I didn’t enroll into college immediately after graduation like most of my friends; I was terrified to write anything after graduation. Instead I joined the military, where at first it seemed grammar and fluency in writing wasn’t as much a priority. Namely what was considered good writing in the military pertains to our annual evaluations ( i.e. the Action-Impact-Result writing format), using poor grammar to fit each of our yearly achievements into small, 115 character slots. My desire to write drastically declined each year, and this insecurity I had was buried alive by being technically certified for my job.

Recently I worked with an Airman who wrote short stories, and was willing to share them with me. Her plots were strikingly similar to the plot I once shared with my brothers. Her enthusiasm for writing in some ways showed me that maybe writing can be fun and exciting again — that writing is a way to express yourself, and might build fluency in reasoning if done correctly. Nowadays I think I’ll enjoy technical writing in the proper way.

Words seem to be the basic building-blocks of new worlds. What can we build with words? Maybe this is my declaration to give writing another chance…

… but still, I’m not a writer yet.

— Gecko