Monday, January 28, 2013

On writing, or blogging as it were...

It had been 10 years since I could write. I had a massive writer's block episode and I couldn't break out of it. Writing prompts, doodling upside down, drinking absinthe...nothing worked. No, I won't tell you where but yes, you can still get it, illegal though it is. The Green Fairy helped quite a lot of writers back in the day, why couldn't it help me? Sigh. I went from writing daily in university, helping others brainstorm ideas,  and winning awards for my writing to doing nothing. Nada. The imagination machine simply ceased to work.

It was probably one of my darkest periods because it is the one thing I really wanted to do. To write. I loved grabbing my pen, or turning on the laptop and just letting it flow..whatever came out. It just wasn't happening. It was like the drive, the excitement of creating something had just dried up. During this time, one good friend(who sat next to me in all those writing classes, incidentally) kept encouraging me to write. Not to worry about anything, just try. With his encouragement, I did. Didn't get very far, but the effort was there on the page. Maybe this would go away and I could get a move on with things. Yeah, right!

Time went on and soon enough, 10 years had passed by. I still hadn't really broken out of it but this friend kept at me. He encouraged me to write, mentioned that one of our professors wrote his own book, and was just there always providing me with the fodder for creation. He is an amazing friend, to say the least.

 I don't know what did it. What turned the imagination machine back on? Maybe it was his stubborn encouragement, maybe the stars aligned in the just the right way, or maybe I finally had gotten over the need to create in order to please others and just please myself. I am not sure, but I finally decided that instead of writing a book , a story, poetry, I would write a blog. Weird leap, I know. Purists would say it is not even real writing. To me, after not doing it for a while, it is probably the best way to jump in with both feet and just do it. To write for the sake of enjoying writing and not to please those around me. Not for a grade, not because I was told this is a subject you NEED to write about....just for me.

I am writing almost every other day. Sometimes more than that, sometimes less than that. But, I AM WRITING. It is a release from a prison of my own making and can I just tell you how wonderful it feels? It is like a huge weight has fallen off my shoulders, because I am now comfortable enough to allow the ideas to flow.

I am hopeful that I keep it up. That nothing stops this new creative process, but what I most hope to gain out of this whole experience, is that I am doing something I love. I am writing this for posterity and also writing it for my friend. Because he believed in my skill more than I did. It's nice when someone believes in you like that, it keeps your light from dying out.

As I am writing this, in freestyle as it were, or a madcap diary entry of some sort, I can't help but thinking of Anne Shirley and her conversation with Gilbert Blythe. In that conversation, he told her to write what she knew about because there would always be plenty of people that would read her stories. Anne Shirley scoffed at him but when she had matured enough to heed his advice, she wrote and wrote about the things she knew about. She used her life as the starting point and went on from there to create a novel. A good one too!

I am hoping that I have now matured, like Anne, have the courage to write what I know about, and enjoy it. So that one day, my friend, Gilbert Blythe, can read it.

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