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35 · Friday, February 26, 2010 OAKVILLE BEAVER · www.oakvillebeaver.com Writing is a powerful pastime By Lindsay Williamson Gr. 11, T. A. Blakelock H.S. riting is just there. It's not owned by anyone or limited to anyone. It's there and open and wild and free. It's something that has the power to surge from paper up the pen and through your mind and ignite it with fire and passion. As I write these words, I feel the confidence and burning swell in my chest I get from making these letters. (Sounds corny I know, but I don't care for it's the truth). Writing is something you draw from within yourself and anything around you. It has no boundaries. In the words of Margaret Atwood: "A word after a word after a word is power." The written word is one of our world's oldest forms of art and creative expression dating back at least five thousand years in the Middle East. It was originally used to record and describe a society's way of life. The Egyptians thought their writings were so powerful that the gods originally created it. Some people, like journalists, who work for magazines or newspapers just love to dig into what's going on in the W world be it the celebrity world or something more serious like politics or the environment. They want to know what's going on around them. There's poetry: lyrical and often intimately closed to the writer, these can be published or kept in secret. Some people like J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer write not only to express their ideas, but also to get published and make a profit, too. Some people publish autobiographies to inspire others and to express their point of view. Others, like me, just love to write for the heck of it, because it's fun and it's a private place for the individual. I write for me, almost like a journal sometimes, I don't have to hold back what I'm feeling or I can doodle. When I write, it's for me and the words aren't for anything but the zing and exhausting rush of freeing emotions. It's not for my teachers, not for my friends, it's mine. It's a refuge, a place of our own beauty and perfection where no one else may enter, unless we allow them to. It's a place of our own making where we don't have to worry about being judged as childish or weird, just because it's a world others would disagree with. I often hear people say "I hate writing!" or "I can't write this!" and I can understand. Writing for school can be physically tiring and, for some, emotionally tiring. But not all just write for school or for work. We write because we love to create and feel a weight off our chests. You can't be afraid of what you write. The soul of what writing is, is infinite. No boundaries. Just the raw passion that comes from the mind and that flows onto the page from our pens, from our core. WOOD N' FLOOR We Install all Kinds of Floors "Refinish Your Wood Floor Like New" Serving Oakville residents for over 20 years KAZ (905)338-1881 Cell (905) 334-2270 www.woodnfloor.ca W European Engineering Combined With Traditional Workmanship "Building on the Brightest Ideas Around Glass" 905.849.0266