I wrote my first sentence as a small child, fresh out of diapers. Even before that, I used my pink, sparkly pen with the fuzz on one end to try and copy outlandish and foreign looking letters from my favorite book, Heidi. I have long since realized that the most important ingredient to any type of writing is EMOTION. Anyone, be it an author, carpenter, painter, surgeon can write if they feel emotion. You might ask: Doesn’t everyone feel emotion?

Yes, everyone feels emotion. But true, strong, raw emotion only comes as often as a blue moon.  Usually, raw emotion comes when something significant in your life occurs. Well, it doesn’t always have to be something significant, but something that struck a match inside your heart, your brain, something that caused fire to course through your body. Ninety percent of the time, that feeling, that emotion is RAGE. PURE RAGE steams out of your ears like at a Spanish bullfighting arena. You are the bull, and everything around you is a blaring red.

In teenagers this emotion occurs most often after a fury-filled argument with your parent(s), guardian(s), uncle(s), aunt(s) or someone else close to you. During this, a chain reaction begins to burst inside of you when you see their anger or rage. It’s even more unpleasant when you begin the fight, or you’re already feeling irate to begin with.

But that spark, that ignition needed to light or begin an annihilation using a petroleum doused hose spread around the world begins with a simple strike of a lighter. And once that rage inflates inside your body like an enormous hot air balloon, it must be let out somehow. Or else it will erupt inside, like a volcano, damaging everything inside of you to the core, causing ripple effects all over.

The best way to utilize that rage is to channel it into something that will benefit you, instead of harm you and twist you, as if your brain is inside the rattle of a baby’s toy that has been shaken too much.

Boxers use the pure madness to beat the life out of their next conquest, or punch their punching bag so hard that it falls down with a loud, satisfying thud. As an individual with a black belt in karate, I know exactly how this is. I’ve been asking for a punching bag for years now, for I know the moments when you just want to punch and punch and never, ever stop. As I am more knowledgeable now, I know to steer that anger towards something productive, such as writing.

As I said, anyone can write. But for those who are not familiar with writing, or those who do not enjoy it, fear not. During a massacre with their parents, many of my friends have written short anger paragraphs and sent them to me for critiques. They sometimes describe anger in itself, a red angry demon, or suicide. The sentences may be choppy, the word language unpretentious, and the grammar and conventions horrendous, but the pure emotion that oozes out between the lines of that writing is unmistakable. It is just the triggering point that can begin an entire war.

Though most are, not all raw emotions are caused from anger. The next common feeling is sadness. Fortunately, I have not been one of those people to experiences tragedies very often. This past summer, my grandfather’s youngest brother passed away. I touched his freezing dead body, so life-like it looked as if he was simply taking an afternoon nap. I watched the individuals I perceived to be the strongest in my life, break down completely. I heard the cries and the wails of the people closest to him and they pierced my heart like a glass shard. I smelled the strong scent of ashes and dust, while he was cremated, as well as a strong whiff of regret. I have tasted the food during the meal on the first night of his death, plain and bland, the tears of all the men and women, the essence of sadness and longing was felt on each and every drop.