My Independent Writing Project: Not Just Music

Author’s Note

Dear Reader,


     My independent writing project is a poem, written in third person, about a girl who’s greatly impacted by music. It describes the ups and downs about the girl’s life and how music has helped her through the journey that is life. I was inspired to do this idea because I’ve recently felt more of an emotional connection with music. And it’s not only the music that I feel a connection with, but with the people behind it as well. Nowadays, there’s nothing like music to carry me out throughout the days.

A couple references or mentor texts that I looked at before starting this project, were poems that were written and made into videos by a couple youtubers. Even though their poems were about a completely different topic and were put into a different format, I was able to look at the way they tried to connect with the viewer with the voice behind their poem and how they engage the viewers with their words.

The whole process of doing this project was really fun for me. There were a lot of ups for me, but still a couple downs. Some successes for me were that since I was already interested and knew first-hand about my topic, it was very easy for me to get started on writing my poem. I am really proud of how the poem is written and I think it’s a good representation of the message that I was trying to convey. A challenge for me during the process was trying to be clear in my writing, that way the reader would be able to understand my poem whether or not they connected to it.

Although I’m very proud of my poem and the finished product, if I had more time I would have made my poem into a video. A visual poem was my initial idea, but due to personal circumstances, I didn’t have enough time and wasn’t able to film the video. Also, if it was made into a video, I feel that it would be easier to reach out to my audience of teenagers, parents, and counsellors.

One of the things that I’ve learned throughout the year is having a voice in your writing and trying to not sound generic, and I feel that was one of the things that really shows in my IWP. Even though it’s written in third person, there’s still a voice behind it. The voice here is someone who knows this girl’s story inside and out, and someone who knows how she feels when it comes to music and wanting to escape.

I really enjoyed doing this project and am so glad that we were given the freedom to write about topics that we are genuinely interested in. With this given freedom, I feel that this is one of my best writing pieces and hope you enjoy it as much as I had writing it.



Katya Attamimi
May 27, 2015



Not Just Music


Have you ever felt like you had everything?
That life was rooting for you?
That everything was just going right?

That’s what she thought.
Then something happened to her.
Something so severe,

that not even she,
could comprehend.

She didn’t know how or why what happened
happened.

She was left with nothing to look forward to,
to hang on to,
to lean on,
except for one thing.

Music

She had never loved anyone or anything,
like the way she loved music.


She walked a lonely road,
a road that she only knew of,
but didn’t even know where it went.

No one had ever touched it,
because they didn’t understand the feeling.
The feeling of each beat,
crashing her ears.

She listened to the people,
whisper words of wisdom into her ear.
It was almost a form of rebellion to her.
Listening to people she had never met,
only heard.

Their sweet voices spoke to her.
They healed the beautiful scars,
on her critical veins.
They spoke to her in a way no one had ever had before.
They spoke to her in a way,
that she was left breathless,

mute.


At home,
all she did was blast music from her speakers.
From the bedroom,
to the radio waves that came from her bathroom.
It was everywhere she went.
On the bus,
in class.
She’d do anything to escape.

Sometimes by escaping reality,
she came out as distant to the outside world,
to her parents,
to the people that tried to understand her,
but in reality,
she felt like a stray.
Lost and thrown away.

For her,
there was nothing like a depressing song to cheer her up.
Why did she feel happy after sad songs?
Maybe it was because she felt the pain
and anger they felt too.
It was the sorrow,
the stitches,
and scars,
that they felt and had that brought her back up.
She realized that there was a little light at the end of the tunnel,
she just had to get there.

She ran,
and ran,
and ran.
Until she reached the end,
where she found her people.

She looked into the eyes of one,
and saw their life written with lyrics.
She saw sweet tunes
and broken dreams.
They said to her,
“whisk away your heart sigh,
and bury them in mine.”

She realized that it wasn’t a person.
It was music.
Music was speaking to her.