Author: Stephanie Suh

Here I am at the end of the first day of a new week. Upon just returning from working on the evening shift at school in the City, I should go to bed instead of writing this post to rest my weary soul coping with daily rituals of emotional ebbs and flows. Yet this is the best time of me to purge out all my angst, fears, and insecurities I am possessed by; the best time because I can walk out of all my daily duties as an administrative assistant at work, as an eldest daughter of my parents at home, and any other status as a functional member of society. This is my time, mine, and mine only to express myself freely without supervision. So here I am, writing.

I like writing: Poetry, essay, letter, email, and notes – in English. Since English is not a primary language I did not pick up from the infancy to the adolescence, I still have to work hard thereon to make my writing perspicuous for telling the world what I mean to say. The grammar may not seem flawless in my writing, but I have got ideas that few can think of. No, this is not a pretentious glib, nor is this a simulation of writer’s confidence in the English language. Yes, I’ve got it for sure.

I have recently bought Stephen King’s On Writing from Amazon.com, and this is a magnificent book! I had never enjoyed any book by American writers until I found this book! It’s a bit hasty to talk about my review of the book at this point because I am still reading it, but King is truly original and ingenious in divulging his biographic tales of how he came to write in his childhood; of how he overcame his dypsomania and drug addiction; and of how he arrived as a successful writer in order to help us write well. I shall return to the subject of his book and the review thereof in another posting later, but the most vivid advice from King registered in my mind is that it is not how many vocabularies I know but how well I use the vocabularies that I have already acquired. This is truly an Eureka moment. King’s advice is worth a million. And this has become my axiom for writing since this day.

And I will not be afraid of writing in English any longer in fear of receiving criticism on some grammatical errors because the purpose of my writing is to tell stories, to entertain ideas/feelings that people can connect with, not to wow English teachers/professors/grammarians/conservatives who may disparage a foreigner’s (especially of East Asian ethnicity) English writing skills.

Thus wrote Stephanie S. I write, therefore I am.