The Colour Purple.

I remember writing an essay in my final English course of high school. It was worth a significant amount towards my graduating mark. I sat down the evening before it was due having not yet finished reading the book it was to be about and I wrote. I just hammered out my thoughts on what I knew and I resisted the panic that I could feel creeping in. It didn't matter that I wasn't done (nor does it matter that I never have finished reading that novel), I felt and knew what I knew.
Into the wee hours of the night, I transferred my thoughts from paper to type. Typed assignment submissions for me had just been made mandatory and I'd neglected to remember how long typing took back then and how short the pieces became in comparison to the printed versions. I also remember how much I enjoyed the editing part of the process. Write. Edit. Reread. Read again. Edit some more. Change a word, a phrase, a whole section. Undo. Change one word again and move along. It was repeated so often in this particular piece that I couldn't remember where I had started and what my writing had evolved into. I just knew it could not be submitted late and there was no way I was going to give up. Finally, at some even more obscene hour, it was complete. I was satisfied I'd given it all that I had.
It was a piece filled with passion, courage, determination and perhaps a lack of sleep. There was a rawness in the writing expanding beyond the requirement of the novel that related to me personally. I can feel that same rawness as I type this memory now.
I love to write. Words are my playground. They entertain my mind. It is of words that my sandcastles are built. The murkiness and muddled mess left behind as the ebb and flow of the ocean wipe away what was fun leave my mark on the world. And so, after floundering for too long, I write again. I write from my heart for me.
That piece I wrote ten years ago, under a situation that I should never have been so careless to entertain, returned the best work of my school days.
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This post was prompted by Jen Lee. Visit her and have a look around. She is inspiring.