The Big Splurge Theory

SPLURGE. That’s a nice, concise way to describe where and how my love of writing began. What the hell is that supposed to mean you might ask?
It was Sophomore year, and at this point, to me, writing was a vague and distant memory. Writing was something off-limits (my attitude was similar to this?). By chance, I signed on for a creative writing class, I figured it was easy credit and from what I had heard the grading system was essentially a joke. The first day we started by receiving a composition book. The instructions were simple: splurge any ideas, thoughts, random words that pop into your mind on the page. The idea was not to have a unified piece of writing. Quite the opposite, the exercise was meant to open us up to simply expressing ourselves... easy enough. From this activity I got a taste of what would become an important part of my life, a love of writing.
My writing tended to be mostly personal narrative. I loved using vivid descriptions, I am a person who lives very much in physical details, as the world to me is a vast , churning, tumultuous sea of stimuli, in which there is nothing better than submersion, so that my senses are completely absorbed in every possible way by my surroundings. This previous cluster of information brings me to the downside of my passion for writing (this itself being only a very mild case). When in the midst of my writing, I tend to drag my thought on, and on... and on. Periods are not something that come naturally to my writing.
Then there came some hope. I am always up for trying new authors, and I attempt to read different styles of literature. I had come across Hemmingway and Camus. The first books I read by Hemingway being “A Call to Arms”, and “The Sun Also Rises”, I was very impressed with his writing. Camus I really enjoyed due to his involvement with Existentialism. These authors brought a new style to my immediate attention. Their writing was so vivid with detail, their characters so strong (I relate personally with Camus’ narrator in “The Stranger”). There was something unexplainable about these authors that had me baffled. They achieved all these things with such minimalist style. I began to write daily, and I yearned to master the ability to conjure up such complexity from so little. I have been writing almost daily about really anything since the time I started the creative writing class. I write about experiences, random thoughts that seem worth exploring. For me the topic is irrelevant, it is the ability to make the topic into something unified and worth reading that counts.
I’ve been able to simplify and shorten some of my writing but I hope to improve on my style even more throughout this year. I find that shortening one’s writing seems to make it more accessible to most readers and it also shows a very important control of language and thought. I intend to practice writing, and to continue to experience new pieces and styles of writing to add inspiration to my own.