By Andrew Samworth
Our brains are composed of all our thoughts, attempting to grab the spotlight from each other. Each tries to be the next words that come out of our mouths or the next sentence on our paper. Some try and make us do crazy things; others just want us to do nothing at all. It’s a constant battle of a thousand ideas as a writer. I have never had an idea win the fight or take the war into their hands. One day to the next, the spotlight would shine its lights on something new, casting shadows on the previous ones.
Grade 6 was the first year I discovered my love for writing. I had a debate in Humanities that year and spoke on the horrendous civil war in Syria. Being a skilled speaker and writer never crossed my mind at that age. It was never something I thought I would want to be. It was through the debate I learned that each word on my paper was a bullet that conveyed emotion, the gunpowder being the words we wrote from our hearts. I wrote about how the world saw what was going on inside Syria, the way each country reacted and how they either chose to do nothing or make a change. For the first time, my own words brought me to tears–not out loud, but silent like the air after a bullet shot. The words on the paper that I spoke, read, and wrote, filled me with emotions that I never knew I had put into this piece of writing. The moments of sadness, happiness, hope, and despair, each moment was conveyed to those listening and to my very self
Grade 7 was the year when I experienced the genre of perspective writing and fell in love. We were assigned a book based on World War One. The book I chose was written from the perspective of a frontline soldier, trapped in a world of death and destruction. It was written as a letter dedicated to his beloved wife, Anne, who he had left behind to go join the army. I never experienced someone else’s life so vividly through the words written on paper, someone who was so far away from me that I would never be able to reach him. Once finished reading, we had to write a creative essay in a form we chose. I chose to mimic the book and write a letter as if I were a soldier from World War I.
I read the book, I cried; I wrote a letter, I cried; I smiled, I cried. The words that I wrote and the words that I read contained these unseen powers that I never knew existed.
A thousand ideas in my head, each so different yet so similar to the other. Each a brother and a sister, fighting, loving and battling it out to seek attention. They had time on their own and time with each other. The lucky ones would be considered as inspiration, the unlucky ones would be thoughts forever floating in the shadows cast on them, but never left behind or forgotten. Some made it to words on paper, some made it to words on the notes app, and some wound up on a desk unfamiliar and read over.
A thousand ideas. Some days it may have been 3, others it may have been three thousand. I will never be able to fully comprehend the emotion they have or what they are, but I do comprehend what they become. They become a warrior striving to be the best, a prince looking for a chance to show the kingdom he’s worthy of being king, a soldier fighting endlessly to win the war.
The Howlander 