Writing is an escape from the world for some. It is a source of reflection for others or a simple way of finding peace. For Middle School English teacher Jacey Choy writing is way of showing her perspectives on the world.

“It’s just a way of expressing how I feel or how I see life,” Choy said.

Writing has always been Choy’s silent voice, even if she didn’t realize that being a writer was something she wanted to do from a young age.

“I think that in my life I have always enjoyed writing. I have always been a writer and I have always been a reader. So when I was in elementary school I read a lot…and then I also started writing. You know, when you are in middle school, you start keeping journals and diaries, I had…pen pals that I would write to,” she said.

Choy never seriously contemplated becoming a writer because she was pushed in other directions, like becoming a lawyer or doctor, more “concrete” professions she said. Choy first seriously considered becoming a writer in college.

“I never really thought about it until…college… I took a creative writing class that I did really well in, and had a lot of fun with, and that’s when I started thinking [that] maybe I could do something with this,” she said.

Choy still manages to find time to express herself through writing. Her writing schedule “is chaotic… I just try to find time, I don’t think of it daily anymore because I just don’t have time every day or energy, but I think of it in weekly terms so I try to, especially on the weekends, set aside Sunday for sure to write, and hopefully carve out some time on Saturday…and then during the week, if there is something I really want to write about then I just try to sneak that in, but that is as much of a schedule that I can get. It’s different in the summer when I don’t have a job, and then I will write every day.”

Choy published the short story “Red Cranes” featured in Fiction on a Stick, a collection of short stories written by Minnesotan authors. “Red Cranes” is a story about a young Japanese girl in the 12th Century whose father becomes very sick. She wants to grow into an individual but can’t because of the setting. Choy’s poem “Snow Storm in the City” placed in a competition held by Park Bugle, a local newspaper from Saint Anthony Park.

Choy’s writing often deals with “family… and home and what it means to be not with those things, like not with family and not with home, because I am not, and I think that’s why I tend to write about those things most.”
The theme of family shines through in “Red Cranes” as the main character struggles between taking care of her mother and becoming her own individual.

Being a reader has added to Choy’s life in so many ways, allowing her to understand situations because she has already experienced them through reading, encouraging her to have more empathy.

“Sometimes you don’t meet people or situations like the ones you read about, but you can imagine that…so that when you meet people you have different kinds of relationships with [those] people, you can think about them in different ways, [reading] maybe gives you more empathy,” she said.

Being a writer has given Choy the chance to fully express herself: “Writing has really been a way for me to look at the world and to express how I feel about the world,” Choy said.

“A lot of writers are introverts, and I am one of those, and it is easier for me to express myself in writing than it is to be in front of a group performing.”

For Choy, writing will always be a way to communicate how she observes the world without requiring her to say a word aloud.