The concept of writing seven hundred and fifty words a day is intriguing, thrilling, and at the same time dreadful. Stick-to-it-ness as some may call it is hard for many, including myself. I have the same problem that many writers posted about in regards to this challenge. How do you become a better writer when you only write when you are driven to do so, when the muse strikes you where you sit. Sometimes I want to write, but I instead stare at the TV, look across the LONG living room and think, eh, that sounds like a lot of work. And that is just sad.
My blog, my wanna-be writer blog, is a sad little thing that no one, umm okay that I never blog on anymore and the world knows that I need to write. For me, writing is forced therapy, time to look internally at conflicts that are bubbling up, at the world around me that is causing me strife, and to find myself in that world.
I blame my previous city, and thank it all together. If I hadn't lived there, I wouldn't have worked for the people and with the people that I did, I wouldn't have been submitted to be a part of our cities chapter of the National Writing Project, and I would never have discovered a desire to write.
The desire to create had always existed, but the desire to create, that was new, an unknown feeling for me as a young adult. The National Writing Project and the Summer Institute I found and participated in could not have come at a better time in my life. Recently divorced I had many emotions still running through me. I had been separated for a year at this point, and was struggling with the transition from being someone's wife, to be single, and unknown to me, to being someone's girlfriend. The changes that had to occur before this change could happen was one that I could not have done if it had not been for the Summer Institute. Every day at the Institute, started with an hour of writing. The "Hour of Power" as it was kindly referred to, when we sat as a group and wrote, in silence. I had many day dreams of the group of us taking over the world as our fingers grazed over countless key boards as we poured out our souls and our hearts onto the page and onto the shinny screen in front of us. This act of "putting it out there" is what allowed me to get over my husband, to find forgiveness and love, and to find myself in this crazy thing called life. Every time I write I feel more connected with myself, and the world around me. And then, for a while, I refuse to write. I refuse to put my "pen to paper" to create and to allow that part of my grain to work.
Why do I do this? Why do I deny myself this act of self realization? Probably because then people ask you one question that I have yet to figure out... what do you do with it once you have written it? "Stare at it" is a common response, because my writing is for me and for the vague readers who meander through the pithy writing of an over worked school teacher. Its purpose is to allow me to vent, to be calm, and its not for publication. My historical novels are the only pieces I have written that are "publishable" and the fear of letting people see inside of me that fashion, see in side of my mind is nerve wracking and unsafe and therefore, I avoid it like the plague, or like small pox both of which sounds like terrible ways to die, but now I'm getting off track.
So now, on the brink of a new year, and finishing a year that has all in tense and purposes kind of sucked, I do the thing that I do not believe in, and make a New Year's Resolution. Not to lose weight that I will never lose, or to call my mom more often, but to do my best to write these words and blog more often, seems good enough to me.
Cheers to a better 2012!
