I have always known, with certainty, that writers are magicians.

Growing up in a family of readers, I was taught from a young age that comfort and insight were always just a few paragraphs away.

I learnt that the simplest of actions spans many lines, and that true magic is never far away.

Writing is simple, convenient, and unexpectedly glorious.

Writing is beautiful. Not in the way that filters and Photoshop make things beautiful, with smiles and pouts dripping with misplaced hope; where we are smoothed, corrected, and fixed. 

No, writing is beautiful in the way old-timey portraits are beautiful. Where there are creases, wrinkles, and shadows. Where the imperfections of life are real and perfect, and incredibly lovely—in the way that matters, because it makes us feel more rather than less.

I write for the same reason that I read, because it enables us to take the boring, the mundane, and makes it sparkle.

Writing can take the unfair and unforgiving parts of life and make the reader think of hope. It gives us permission to look at the darkest parts of being human—the parts that keep us up at night—and find a way to feel like it could be okay.

It gives us hope that things can be different things, better things.

To write is to transform.

For some reason, the simple act of writing something down makes it feel somewhat truer; it’s as if, because we can see it, we can now do something with it.

As we write, we obtain the power to engage with something that started out as a mere thought—we take something vague and translucent from our minds, and make it concrete.

Writers bring thoughts into reality, and so reality begins to feel less scary. With a flick of a pen, we can turn loneliness into bravery, and a closet into a magic door.

Writing allows you to be big—not big in an intimidating, scary way. Rather, big in a way where you no longer feel small; where you no longer see from the ground, but the sky; from a mountaintop instead of a rusted lawn chair. Instead of the narrowness of fear, you see the broadness of being in love.

In a world where so much is out of our control, writing gives us the power to at least control what is on the page; here, we can twist and prod until it says what we want it to say. We can even, however briefly, see the world the way that we want it to be.

When you write, you have space for everything—to see everything, feel everything—to be anything and everything at once. 

A page is an empty room simply waiting for your favourite chair, your chipped coffee cup, a memory that you forgot to love. This is a place where you don’t have to keep all your worries in your head.

Journaling, list-making, and indulgently-emo poetry; these things—these miraculous ways of coming home to ourselves—do not get enough credit.

Writing can be a helpful first draft of our feelings, needs, and ideas; it allows us to decide if something is true or false, or whether it simply needs a revision. It can even allow us to plot out potential solutions without any shame or commitment.

Writing provides the space between aimless obsessing, and actually doing something about it. At the very least, it can be incredibly comforting to have our pain exist somewhere concrete.

Here, on that empty page, you have the opportunity to be unapologetically yourself.

I am no expert on the subject; worse, I let doubt prevent me from even becoming an amateur.
I put off writing because I think that I need to write about the big stuff; that it has to be epic novels or awe-inspiring poetry—I didn’t know that you could write about the small stuff.

I didn’t realise that it’s the small stuff—the mundane—that makes the big stuff; the uncomfortable, and oh-so-human stuff.

And so, now I write more because I finally write about things I know.

We allow our most-trusted authors to change our reality all the time, and it has done wonders in making humanness seem magical, instead of inconvenient.

Writing is blank and open; it is sheer, untarnished potential. It exists as nothing and everything. It is freedom, and so I write because I, too, would like to be free.

Through book, I have fallen in love with many worlds.

Through writing, I hope to fall in love with my own.

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