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Reclaiming Your Voice With Vocal

Write and be Read

By Alejandra Mora HendlerPublished 3 years ago 4 min read
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Reclaiming Your Voice With Vocal
Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

I have always been a writer. It started around age ten when I wrote poetry in a little yellow notebook about the mean girls. Then the poems grew in meaning, and soon all my thoughts held a direct line to the pen, to the paper, to the world. Even if that world was just words freely sitting on the page, out of my head and the only eyes seeing them my own, it didn’t matter, because I was a writer.

There is a certain freedom that comes from connecting to the lexicon in your mind in such a way that it conveys emotion and feeling into the words that spill out. I have done that with a few lines of poetry, some fiction and a lot of memoir. There are things I cannot speak of-bad memories or trauma that prevent the words to formulate out loud, but write them down? That I can do with my eyes closed. (Well maybe not closed, I am not that good a typist.)

A great bond is formed with language when you trust it enough to express what’s inside, when your feelings bubble up to the surface and all you must do is cramp up your hands with the ferocious need that’s building and get the words out as fast as you can.

By Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Last year the pandemic began and affected us all in too many ways. Personally, I was faced with the question about my identity. Is how I portray myself to the world the person I really am, or am I hiding within a façade that is getting old fast?

The idea that I could get sick and die without notice haunted me, made me wonder about what would be said about my life after I was gone. One scenario plagued me- would there be anyone at any point, in their conversations about me say the following-“I think she tried to be a writer, but I think she was just a secretary.”

Now I will be very clear with my point in writing this. I am in no way criticizing any job or career, or industry. I am also not saying that of course during these thoughts of premature demise, that I didn’t wonder about my child, about my spouse, about my parents, family, loved ones, friends. I am talking about after that, when a random person wonders about who I was, what I contributed to the world- that yes of course I was a wonderful mother, but what else, what made me special?

Maybe these conversations wouldn’t have happened. Perhaps posthumously, my work would have been discovered and my poetry and writings would live on in infamy But, in my land of reality I really could not let go of that thought that if I died, I never would have truly fulfilled my dream of devoting my life to writing.

I participated in Nanowrimo last year, aka National Novel Writing Month..

...where you aim to write the first 50k words to a novel. I stuck with it and wrote 54k in 30 days, (Unreal right?!) My urban fantasy novel is currently in the editing stages.

But I wanted to write more. Yes, poetry is always my thing. I am working on my third poetry book, but this collection is more full length, not like the two chapbooks of before.

But still, that was along the lines of the writing on the side thing I had been doing for years. I needed more-more daily writing, not connected to projects I was working on. I needed a tool, an outlet, a community. That’s when I found Vocal.

It was an ad on Instagram providing information on the Little Black Book Challenge and in one afternoon on the due date of March 2nd, with only a few hours left till 11:59 pm, I came up with the story, called Number 16, The Notebook and the Beach.

Did I win? Ha! No. Even though my mom said I would, I did not. But it was a thrill, a rush to write, to read other stories, to join the Vocal communities on Facebook. Where had this been, this place where I could create an unlimited amount of writing, where my creativity could flourish, where I could work this muscle, that’s stronger than any other one I have?

The closest I came to a writing community was when I wrote for Nanowrimo, because during that month there is support like you wouldn’t believe. And yes it’s still there but not the same.

Maybe I found this because I was ready now. Maybe I needed to be laid off from a job I hated and was unappreciated in, where I put them first instead of myself and my needs. Where I was working for an industry I first loathed then tolerated, to now having the time and the fear to wonder what was next.

Writing. It is always there, like the slow hum of a typewriter, patiently expecting the next tap of the keys. My craft, my talent, my dream, it has never left my side.

By Markus Winkler on Unsplash

I will not leave it, on the side of some road like a discarded Styrofoam cup, that will never age, always sit there, gathering dust, waiting for me to pick it up again. I will not keep it second because that would be continuing to keep myself second. That is something that I will not ever let happen again.

Thank you for taking the time to read.

By Jamie Street on Unsplash

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About the Creator

Alejandra Mora Hendler

Mother, wife & author. My poetry chapbooks and novella are on amazon. A free chapter of the novella is right here on vocal, and my new book Jasper & Sunny will be released here first one chapter at a time!

www.alejandramorahendler.com

Hugs!

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