Here you will find my personal essay inspired by an example I found thanks to Coolessay reviews
I’m not your typical guy. I’m not skilled in any physical way, and I can’t play an instrument, but I can write. That’s all my dad cared about and that’s all he ever pushed me to do. He didn’t even let me ride horses as a child because he was afraid it would ruin my hands for writing later on—in his mind, there was just no future in anything else.
I’ve always been able to invent stories for myself. I would create characters, and places and even begin to write little short stories, my own adventures. However, all of my “stuff” was a complete mess (sometimes literally) and I made no attempt to make it look presentable.
What the hell did I have to lose? When all of my writing was in print no one could see it anyway. There was no one to ask how I came up with the characters, the settings, or how my stories came together. I had always known this, but there seemed to be no reason to do anything about it.
Losing a parent is a pain that no one should ever have to suffer. Never having a dad around to help me out with anything has had devastating effects on my life.
Along with the issues of being raised by a single dad, there was also my mother. She was very difficult to get along with. Her issues seemed to center around money and the desire for me to make money for her, but that’s just the way she is. If she didn’t have money, she wanted it. She would verbally attack me in front of my friends at school and became extremely angry if I talked about anything but work or sports (she didn’t think the writing was something that anyone could make a living at). She would always tell me that I was “leaking words” and that I had no talent. In her mind, my only value was as a worker, and she would do anything to make sure that I never became a writer.
I made my way through college without getting into much trouble. I had gotten a job at a local supermarket where I spent most of my time looking through old paperbacks and magazines for stories to write. I found a copy of Sunset Road by Wayne D. Overholser, and I knew that I had finally found the answers to all of my questions.
I felt as if I was being shown the way for the first time: it wasn’t just about trying to create my own world. This was something that had been done before, and there were rules. My mind was opened up to new ideas and thoughts.
Then came Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, in which I learned about the mythic West. I would sit in one of the old leather chairs in my house on nice summer nights and read this book, imagining myself in that wild, wide-open land. I realized that stories about cowboys and Indians were the reason why I would always draw the wild, wide open spaces in my head. It was the people from those stories that created them—I always knew it all along but didn’t know how to get there.
Dances with Wolves opened me up even more about these ideas. I was in awe of what the screenwriters had done to create this other world. The people in that film were stunning, they had depth and beauty—and they were still alive. The actors I picked out of my head started to become the characters on my paper.
My dad had already noticed that I was writing and encouraged me on many occasions. Now, after having been exposed to these greats and decided to try my hand at writing, he became even more excited. Now that I was an adult and the decision was up to me he didn’t want to “interfere.”
I found out how hard it can be when you’re on your own for the first time, but I also discovered how great life can be when you finally get your dreams.
I believe that I have a lot to offer this world and that I can do it by writing. It took me a long time to figure it out, but now that I know where I want to go, I’ll never stop moving forward.
I hope you found this information helpful. Thank you for reading.
