eric's Writing Portfolio

A beef bowl I made this summer

This was my essay for Kenyon Review Young Writers’ Workshop, discussing why I like writing.

Starting kindergarten, I spent my lunches staring at a craggy white wall. I was an American wearing a Chinese face, uncannily different, and thus, alone.

But emerging from the wall’s wrinkles and holes were worlds forming before my eyes. Ravenous snakes wearing human faces slithered out from the cracks, and my eye-floaties shaped images of dungeons underneath my feet. I soared through these realms, delving into their inhabitants’ minds and envisioning life there.

The worlds and beings on that wall kept me company as I adapted to China. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was cooking up stories.

I never stopped childhood make-believe. Daydreaming on my bed one day, my mind projected memories of regret upon the ceiling, and I began imagining talking to alternate selves who made different decisions, in a different universe. I mentally explored this fantastical, yet somehow familiar world, but only through pen and paper could I give rest to the idea. Through writing, I ironed flat the jumbled, opaque mass of thoughts, allowing me to see it from above, fill in the gaps, and sculpt something beautiful: an epistolary story of a mother and her child exploring love, sacrifice, and the common good. Writing allows me to escape the turbulent syrup of life and explore these worlds and in turn, my mind.

I know you expected a recipe, but the often-ignored recipe introduction shows the magic of creating something new from one’s heart. Readers may cry, ponder, or chuckle at a final work, but they will never see the author smiling in awe as a conceptual universe becomes real. I write simply because the story I want to read will remain unwritten until I write it.

After all, the secret ingredient to a great story may just be a blank wall.