A lot of the memories I have of writing are quite vivid; but when I try and answer the question of why I want to be a writer, all of those memories just seem to blur all together, and I can't seem to answer in the way I want to. When I have ideas for a story or a poem, they are very detailed in my head, and when someone asks me about how those ideas are going to be put down on the page, I can't explain it. They don't see what goes on in my head when I write, the visuals that I want to put down on the page and show to the reader. Those scenes in my head would answer their question better than I can explain it here in words.

I read once that "if you allow yourself to feel the way you really feel, maybe you won't be afraid of that feeling anymore." That's the driving force in my poetry, that if I just sit down and admit what's going on inside of me, it disappears faster than not dealing with it at all.

I wrote my first poem on a whim. A simple song had inspired me to write a few lines that rhymed on a boring summer night. I was fifteen then, just finished with my first year of high school, and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.

Now when I fast forward to the summer right after I finished my first year of college, I can't help but wonder where I would be without poetry in my life. I always think of it as a car wash of sorts: I go into writing a poem with some sort of emotional mess, and when I write it I always feel like I have been cleansed, like the words have helped to clean me up, put my emotions in some semblance of order, until an experience dirties up my mind and won't let me forget until I wash it again.

Prose writing started out the same way for me-- on a whim. I wrote a story in a weekend; it wasn't long at all, but it was something that I felt could let my imagination run to wherever it wanted to take me.

I high school, though, my imagination brought me to the place I knew the least about: myself. It was like a room that was dimly lit, and the experiences that I had during those years pushed me into the dark corners where a mirror was hung, forcing me to look at myself. And when I took my first class in college on how to write an autobiography, I got the chance to reflect on all of those poems and short pieces that I wrote to help me to overcome my sadness. I realized how much I love to write, how it is the only thing in the world that makes me feel comfortable and safe by taking me to uncomfortable places sometimes, how it is the only thing that I can be confident with and say that it is my creation.

For me, what keeps me going is that I love to hear people tell stories, and I love to read about them. Most of the friends I made in Las Vegas growing up were people that had moved all over the place. They all had stories to tell, with their own epiphanies and revelations along the way, changing some part of themselves in every city they lived in so that they could adjust. I'd lived in Las Vegas all my life, so their journeys fascinated me. How they got to be who they were by going through so many changes made me think about who I had become by just staying in one place.

In hearing those experiences, it shapes my writing, and gives me the drive to try new forms of prose and poetry. Now, I want to grow as a writer not just in experience, but in my craft as well. I'm always trying to push myself to try something else that I haven't tried before.

In writing about these experiences, it is always a spiritual journey for me. I'm going to places that I've never been, and when I've come back from that place, I've found a piece of myself that I didn't see before. Even when I'm writing about friends, I see in them the reflection of myself. What would I do if...? I ask myself. How would this experience help me grow if I was there? Everything that I write about it about taking my own path, even if it tries to be in someone else's shoes. It's all about learning.

That's why religion interests me so much. I am always asking people about their beliefs, about how they got to where they are spiritually, and what kind of lessons they've learned that got them there. As someone who never grew up in a religion, anything to do with the spirit fascinates me.

I feel like I am closer to myself when I write, which is why many people are very religious, I think. They feel that worship of God, or Allah, or Buddha, or Shiva, or Diana is what makes them more aware of themselves as they try to get closer to whatever spirit or divine person drives them. It's like they have their own car wash, their own cleansing of the emotions through their particular worship or ritual.

The writing that most influences me, in all the few years I have been writing, are the writers from Britain. Donne, Byron, Lawrence, Woolf-- these authors were what brought out the ideas in my head, their visions and feelings for their country bringing to me a longing to see those things for myself. Ever since high school I have wanted to go to England to study and see what inspired them. And so, for my travel abroad I sincerely wish to go to England to further my study English Literature, and possibly study the role of the church in that country.

In my life, there are some feelings that I would rather not feel. But with writing, I dive into the black ocean and swim with the sharks for awhile, getting used to the fact that they're really menacing, but not at all hurtful after a time. And then, it's finished, the journey over, the experience implanted in my brain, the feelings felt to that I won't have to feel them anymore.