Sndbox Summer Camp Writing - Task One: Writing is a healing process

I grew up as a shy girl, overly introvert. I called myself as "behind the scene" kind of person. I enjoyed doing after school activity, be part of an event or so, but had to make sure that I did not have to be standing on the stage. If I wondered about something, I couldn't ask anyone about it. So instead I would search about it in any book I could find.

I have always been a book lover since I was child. Reading was also my way to escape from my daily life. Later on I realize that through reading, I can"travel" around the world.

Writing, was the following story. Probably it was because I found it hard saying things, so instead I wrote everything

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I started writing in high school. I couldn't remember why, but I took part in a writing competition. After completing my very first short story, I could not submit it due to lack of confidence. Strange thing happened, my name was on the list as one of the winner of writing competition. Later on that day, one of my classmate confessed that he took my writing and submitted it to the committee. The thought of my writing being read by the other people did not encourage me to write more or so. Instead, I stopped writing.

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Years after, I moved to Sarajevo, in the east of Europe. I did not remember anymore about my short story, and never cross my mind that being in far away country would "force" me to start writing again.

Just after few days settled in this city, I couldn't handle the fact that I barely speak my own language as there were only small number of Indonesian living across the country. I thought I would forget the language in no time. Silly me, I know. I had also suffered from memory lost, in a way that I couldn't remember anyone from my home town, easily forgetting names and so on. That is when I looked for a way that keep my memory, not by myself only, but in case I keep forgetting, someone out there would know about me. At that time I learned about multiply, a free writing platform where you can blog everything you want. And I did not have to use my own name, did not have to show who I really was, could write even the silliest thing happened during my life as student, wrote about my crush and so on. And all with my own language.

Looking back to my life as student in Sarajevo, my introvert-self was still there that I could not communicate well my classmate. Only couple of them could stand with my shyness and so on. Writing somehow saved me from being lonely and depressed as I keep writing whatever happened, whatever my problem was written on my blog.

Writing is Way of Sharing

There is a saying from local-famous-writer ,

"One can be clever as high as the sky, but as long as he does not write, he will disappear in society and from history. Writing is work to eternity."
― Pramoedya Ananta Toer

One can always choose to write a topic that define who they are. One can also choose to hide his identity while "living" in cyberspace. It all depends on that specific person, and his purpose of writing. The same thing goes to me. I started blogging because I did not want to forget my own language, I wanted to have my daily life written on my blog. After quite sometimes, my purpose of writing shifted. I want to share more to people, as I got to learn a lot too from other blogpost.

I believe that whatever you write (and share), there are people out there who get the lesson from your writing. Even if you write something stupid, based on your preference. Take an example, there was once when I wrote about my silliness living abroad for the first time. I didn't expect to get a good feedback, but people found it hilarious. Well at least, someone was laughing after reading my silly story :D

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Writing is another form of speaking

As I mentioned above, I found it hard to speak about something, while writing was a lot easier. At first, I wrote in the way other people wrote on their blog. As the style was not my style, it became hard to write down your opinion in some other people style. It's like when you normally eat pizza directly with your hand, but just because some other people use fork and knife, you start doing so with the thought that way would be more acceptable. But that's not you at all.

But I keep writing even though it was quite weird. From one blog post to another, I finally found my own style. I did not know what kind of style was that, but according to some friends who constantly read my blog said that I wrote with the same way as I talked. I use simple words so that it's understandable. Glad that my writing is, well, okay :D

And Sndbox ?

Being part of sndbox would give me opportunity to learn more. Sndbox is filed with many creative writer around the world. Writing is a learning process, a never end one. And Sndbox is one of the media that give you the opportunity to learn and learn. And I am looking forward to be part of the team.