What made you start writing?

I used to hate writing - until I started taking it seriously.

The dislike began in Primary School, where I had to keep a weekly journal.

Can you imagine how difficult it is for a 7 year old with limited vocabulary to express his thoughts?

The arduous process of looking at a physical dictionary and trying to string words together to document a page of "What I did over the weekend?".

The disappointment of receiving red markings all over the page that highlights all the missing details and grammatical errors made.

The repeated process of putting in effort and not getting rewarded scarred me for 8 years before I decided to put an end to this cycle by taking writing seriously.

I remembered it was just before my mid year examinations in Secondary 3. I was tasked to write an argumentative essay on whether Meritocracy has led to greater inequality.

I wrote the essay as per normal and submitted, but for the first time, I was curious about what my teacher thinks about when she reads it. I asked her for a consultation and requested that she explain her thought process when she reads and grades my essay.

That consultation session was phenomenal. She went through the essay line by line, explaining in detail what she felt was lacking, why my argument was incomplete and how difficult it is to follow my thoughts in the essay because my ideas were all over the place.

For the first time, I felt so compelled to write an essay that will please her - the reader. I want her to praise me that my essay was easy to follow and arguments were strong.

With that in mind, I adopted a reader's point of view when writing my essays. I would consider different sentence structures to express the same idea. I would ensure that my arguments were properly supplemented with evidence. I would ensure that every sentence served its own purpose.

In 2 weeks, I wrote a total of 10 essays and consulted with my teacher almost every day! I improved at an alarming rate and finally won my teacher's approval. The success I felt when my teacher told me "this essay is nice to read" was unforgettable.

That was the turning point of my take on writing. The concept of audience-centric has helped me in my other endeavours such as tutoring and product development.

That's the story of how I started enjoying writing, what about you?

PS: Hope this is a nice first post. Probably writing about more tech stuff in the future. It has been awhile since I last wrote a post this long and I was inspired by @tlylt to do so :)