As you may have seen from Sunday, I am using the book “All are Free to Write” by Sheila Allee to help me to feel inspired and to write. The first prompt was about intentions for the next year and giving permission to do things. I made a list of 5 different things I want to give myself permission to do this year. I know I am technically starting this book in the month of February, but I think I can still work towards utilizing it appropriately.
The third INTENTION on my list is:
Writing daily.
There are two reasons I want to write. Well maybe not reasons, but areas that I want to write in. The first is I have always wanted to write a fiction book and the second is more personal. It is about being able to voice the past openly without issue. It is about having a voice in ways that I have not in the past. I realized recently that I have allowed other people to direct me in life, even in my career. I keep not forcing myself into the field that I want to be in, which is trauma. I want to become skilled in helping individuals with PTSD and individuals that have more severe mental illness.
In the past, I always had a spark for writing and this was fostered a lot by my dad. He always wanted me to write more. He helped me to understand that I could write. Other aspects of who I am as a writer though are from my own life and perspective. I am not an individual that concerns themselves in a first draft about hitting the correct punctuation. I do not care if everything is spelled correctly. This is because in non-fiction works, I believe that focusing on being a grammar hound keeps people out of the conversations that they may need to be in. If we stop someone on social security, for example, from sharing their experiences because they are not able to spell every single word correctly, we lose as a society on an important perspective. I remember where this mentality came from. It was a social work course at Ball State University. We read the book, “Rose’s Story” and this changed me and my perspective on writing and what it could be. This was the second time that reading changed my writing viewpoints, but we will get into the second one in a few minutes. “Rose’s Story” was a woman literally on government assistance sharing her story of being on government assistance and what her life had been like. It was powerful because this can be used to help other people to better understand the world we live in and how some people have more privilege than other people. The other one came first actually. It was the book “Uncle Vampire” by Cynthia D. Grant. I was going through a vampire kick and was reading everything the public library had on them. This book came up. I read it and it was the first time I understood fully that a writer could utilize something to tell a story you didn’t know you were even reading. It was powerful and shocking. I remember walking away from it and knowing that I was changed as a reader and a writer. That I knew you could hide things until the end and it be helpful as well to convey vital information.
Writing has become more important to me recently, as I recognize that I enjoy it. I find my heart soaring when I think about what a character will do. I enjoy thinking about how a character may develop, in a sense, past what I thought they would be in a story. I am working to help myself find ways to keep writing now. I have been working on a murder mystery novel and I am realizing if I ever want to finish it, I need to develop the habit of writing daily. I know, as a mental health professional, that habits need to be developed, so I am working on creating aspects of my day that include writing in some way. One of these ways that I am doing that are the prompts that I am utilizing. Right now, I am trying to get that non-fiction voice going, as I feel like that is the one that needs to begin and then I am going to start trying to put out short stories here on the site.
I have realized that for me, writing is not about money. It is about that previously mentioned voice. I am not hoping to be the next Stephen King, Mary Higgins Clark, Agatha Christie, or etc. I am just looking to write and enjoy myself. There is a piece of myself that I have muted for years and I do not want to do that anymore. I want to give in to it. I want to not worry about rules though and I just want to write. That is why I think a blog is the correct way to go about this right now. I think writing here will help me to develop my own voice and allow me to start to recognize how I exist in this writing world.
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