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Evan Lange
English Comp 2
Sarah Hughes
2/22/16
Writer Identity Narrative
As a writer I like to reflect who I am onto everything that I create, and being a
simple man, my writing is portrayed as such. I have taken many strides with my writing
throughout my life and this process of growth began at some point during my high school
career. Up until that point I hadnt really had an interest in writing nor did I think I was
capable of producing anything worth reading. Since then I have spent a fair amount of
time creating poetry as well as writing for my college courses. However, I have not spent
nearly as much time writing as I would have liked to.
It was during my senior year of high school when I first discovered that writing
was something that I had an interest in. I enrolled in a creative writing course and from
there I was really able to lay a foundation to which I would later add. One of the things
that I learned in that class that really helped me in the coming years was that of
descriptive writing. The teacher in that class always repeated the same phrase over and
over. She would always declare, Show, dont tell! What she was saying really stuck
with me and once I was able to fully understand the message, I was then able to continue
to apply it to my writing. How I understand this phrase is that Im essentially being asked
to expand on my ideas and my sentences. To me, it is almost like I am fluffing something
up as much as I possibly can. Most people when they hear that might see it as bullshitting
an essay last minute and adding as much fluff as you can to the paragraph to make it

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longer. I see it in a different way. To me Show, dont tell! is taking an idea and painting
a vivid picture of said idea. One takes their time when painting this picture, imploring
from the idea and the sentence as much as humanly possible. The artist, or writer in this
case, takes that detail and reflects it onto the figurative canvas. In this way, I as a writer
can convey whatever I need to, in a way that is both comprehensible and contextually
legible to all audiences. From this one teaching, that I am so grateful for, I have been able
to expand as a writer and reach new horizons in my creative abilities.
From this new realization of my desire to write, I have been able to experience
new parts of myself and to understand myself more as a writer. I have found that creating
poetry is something that really opens me up to my intuition. When I say intuition, I am
talking about an inner wisdom or inner truth. Poetry gives me a connection my to soul, to
my heart, to something chaotic. Poetry opens me up to the multitudes within me and to
the beauty around me. Without poetry, there are certain things in my life that would never
have any light shed on them. My style of writing, especially when it comes to poetry is
big and mythic. It is as if the words I speak and the words I convey are somehow directly
in tune with the sky. It is as if theyre directly in tune with the sun. I feel them coming
from my core and I wonder if the message is perhaps coming from within. When I write I
also wonder, is what comes from within also coming from the outside. The outside being
the greater universe contained within me. The truth and wisdom shared through poetry
open others and myself up to new truths and new meanings. This is why I emphasize to
myself how important it is that I continue to write, how important it is that I continue to
create.

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I am extremely grateful for where I have been carried in my life, including where
I have been carried to as a writer. Before high school, I was thoroughly convinced that
nothing I produced was even close to worth reading. As time has gone by and as Ive
spent more time being curious and opening up to what is within me, Ive created beautiful
works that are incapable of being judged. After I left high school, to my surprise, I was
sent an email from my teacher telling me that one of my poems had been given an award
by the literary festival that my school orchestrates every year. I had never even heard of
the festival and Im glad that I did. This event is another reason that I continue to write
and another way that Ive been shown that what I write really does have meaning. I know
that for myself as a writer, I cannot judge what I conceive because it is both dishonoring
and demeaning to my life. In judgment, there is no growth, and if I wish to continue on a
path in which I grow as a writer, there can be no shaming in what I fashion.