The Power of Paper and Imagination

When I need a place to escape, I re-find my inner peace on a piece of paper. For as long as I can remember drawing and writing have always been my safe place. A place I could lose myself from everything, whether it be rejection, sadness, anger, or even happiness. With a piece of paper in front of me, I am free to express myself and my emotions to my fullest extent. I remember my love of drawing going back early into my childhood. As I matured into a preteen and teenager I got into writing, mostly poems and song lyrics. I expanded my writing into short stories and played around with several book ideas after school, however, never got around to writing.

My love of writing truly started in probably either the 7th or 8th grade when I was introduced to poetry. I particularly took interest in Robert Frost. I started playing around with poetry a little bit here and there for the next 3 or 4 years. In the 10th grade my writing interest truly blossomed into a true passion. It was about halfway through the first semester, and I finally worked up the courage to ask out a freshman girl that I had a crush on since the first day of school. She had just broken up with one of my friends and told me that she was not ready for a relationship. I was kind of disappointed, but I was ok that she had just broken up with my friend the day before anyway. At the end of school that day, I saw her leaving with a jerk from school a grade above me holding hands; then I was devastated. I went home and I will admit I even shed a few tears over it. Then I pulled a spiral notebook out of my backpack and wrote my first poem long enough that I called it a song. I poured out my heart letting all my newfound emotions to this girl flood several pages of poems, bawling my eyes out the whole time.

Now these poems were thrown away just a few years later, before even finishing high school. I do not even remember what some of the titles were or what exactly they were about, but from that day on writing had become a hidden passion that stayed with me through most of my years. The rest of high school and into my early twenties was all about writing songs; sad songs, happy songs, goofy, dark, dirty; the list goes on and on. Every emotion I felt I wrote about; I had notebooks hidden all over my room with songs. I had different notebooks for different types of songs. When I was 21, I was offered an opportunity to work with children in a daycare/preschool type setting and from there, my songs changed to fiction children’s stories, and I aspired to be a children’s author. After getting out of childcare, the idea of a children’s author changed to a fiction novelist.

So, I started working on ideas of possible novels and short stories related to those ideas for the next couple of years. I had never told anyone of my dreams of writing professionally, and never let anyone look at anything I had written except for one girl at school that got a hold of one of my “song books” as a prank and read a few of my poems to a small group of friends. It embarrassed me even more about my writing than I already was, even though she told me they were good, when she finally gave my journal back to me. Other than that, I never really told anybody about my writing except the occasional joke that one day I was going to write a book. When I did finally work up the nerve to tell someone about my plans of writing professionally and showed her (my girlfriend at the time) some of the things I was working on, she laughed at me told me I was crazy and it was very humiliating for me for the next couple hours when she told me that I was trying to live a foolish dream and just setting myself up for failure and disappointment, along with some other harsher things that I won’t go into. That night I built a bonfire and burned everything that I had ever written or drawn. My dreams were crushed, and I decided it was time to “grow up”, like it was suggested that I do, and I gave up writing. I cannot remember the exact year, but I think it was around 2010. I still would joke to a select few family and close friends that one day I was going to write a book, though I never even attempted to write, at least nothing more than a few story ideas.

Drawing has been my lifelong passion for as long as I can truly remember. I was always amazed by artwork and getting to see all the amazing things artists do with it. A lot of this passion comes from my mom and grandmother, whom both love to paint, and are quite talented at it. I was captivated by the ability to create a picture from an incredibly young age.

This was one of the few, if not the only, thing that could hold my attention for more than 15 minutes. This was when I was able to let my imagination run wild and truly be creative and expressive on a completely different level. Like my writing, I have always been overprotective about my drawing, but a little more confident in my abilities and more willing to show my finished pictures off. It really aggravated me if you tried to look at a picture before I finished it, however. Like writing I have explored through many different styles and phases of what and how I drew, and my styles have continuously changed and have grown over the years.

When I burned all my writings, all my drawings went into the flames with it. Unlike writing, however, I did have to sit down every so often, and fulfill my urges and cravings to get a picture out of my head and onto a piece of paper, though most of these have either been lost or thrown away over the years. I am unique in my drawing; I usually use a mechanical pencil, not the typical drawing pencils or even a number two pencil that your average artist would use. And unlike my grandmother and mom, painting was never really a big passion for me, though I do it on occasion. Because of this, most of my drawings remain in black and white; when I do feel the urge to put color to it, my weapon of choice is colored pencils. This is not exactly the most used or even the best-looking technique for most artists. I prefer my drawings to be in pencil, whether they are in color or black and white.

After nearly ten years of leaving my writing ambitions and most of my drawing/illustration ambitions long in the past, I have finally decided it was time for me to pick things back up and start writing again. I also decided that it was time for me to stop hoarding my writings and drawings and start putting them out there for people to see. A few years ago, I told my current wife about my dreams of writing and illustrating my own book, like I had told the girlfriend years ago. My wife, to my surprise, was supportive and always tried to encourage me to start writing again but I never did until this year.

This year my wife and I have made some big life changes. We got on a financial plan, leading us to a debt free future and financial freedom, now to the point that the only debt we owe is our home mortgage. Along with this change, we decided it was time to start bettering our futures and start trying to leave the 6:00 am to 4:30 pm factory work setting and start trying to find more fulfilling jobs. My wife was given a good opportunity in a field she is interested in. For me, I struggled with what I wanted to try to do next until I came across a pod cast called The Ken Coleman Show, that is about finding and landing your dream job. I am not going to go into a big spiel about this pod cast or my growth this year in this story, however, if you are having trouble getting or discovering what your dream job is, I highly recommend checking out this pod cast, this guy is very inspirational. After finding Ken’s pod cast, I decided it was time to start chasing my dream of being a writer and illustrator. After not having written anything in at least 10 years, I did not know where to start and knew it was going to take a long time to get where I want to be. But thanks to the growth I have made this year, I decided to finally start climbing my mountain. Not having a clue where to start, I did what most of us now days would do and pulled up a Google search on how to start out as a writer. What I found was overwhelming, as I had expected, but after days of looking over all the options for beginners, I decided to try out a website I found called Vocal.media. I quickly wrote a short little poem, the very first idea that popped in my head, submitted it to vocal and finally did what I had always been scared to do and put my writing out there. After almost a week of not getting any reads, not allowing myself to feel discouraged, I forced myself to get another story on Vocal. While waiting for this story to get approved, I did a little homework on how to get more reads, so once approved I posted it on my Face book page. In about 3 days each story had 6 reads and each had one heart. I knew that these reads came from family because of the face book comments; none the less I felt confident and more motivated than ever. Vocal.media had helped me finally break the ice in chasing my dream and I was ready to truly give it a try. I soon became extremely interested in the challenges on Vocal and signed up for Vocal +. That was in May of this year and now I currently have 13 stories this will be my 14th story on Vocal. I am currently working on a personal goal to submit an entry into all 8 of the summer fiction series challenges as well as the “Deep Dive” and “Threading the Needle” challenges. I am also 4 chapters deep into what I am hoping will be my first fiction novel. I am having more and more ideas for both possible books as well as new stories for V

+ocal every day. I have even started lists of possible stories and novels. What is absolutely the most amazing thing about this new drive I have, and my current personal goals is that I get to do them using the two things that give me absolute inner peace.

After not really writing anything and barely drawing anything, except on rare occasions, I am sure I am rusty on both, and have a lot of brushing up to do. But I am more confident in myself and more willing to make myself vulnerable and put my work out there. Vocal.media has been a big part in my staying motivated and being able to see how many people are reading my material, however small these numbers still are, my writing being relatively new. Seeing the reads makes me want to put my next story out there even more, as I start to notice a rise in my average reads per story. I have even become motivated enough to start drawing a few pictures to go with some of my stories. As I build my self-confidence, it will lead me to illustrating at least some of my stories. I am nowhere near where I want to be, and honestly have no clue how to get there, or even an exact destination of where there is yet. What I do know is that I am finally trying it out and seeing where it takes me, and Vocal.media along with the Vocal Creators Saloon group I recently joined on face book has helped me lay a foundation and start building my writing profile as well as giving me the motivation to keep pushing forward.

Whether I make it as a professional writer/illustrator or not, and how long it takes if I do, I finally have reconnected with doing my creative projects that truly bring me inner peace and enjoyment. I have finally started letting my emotions and imagination run wild and free once more, and I am more than ready to start putting myself out there no matter how far out there is. With the power of my imagination, with my paper as my shield and my sword my pen or pencil, I am ready to fight my inner demons and share my heart and creativity with the world. Wherever this journey takes me is unknown and I am certain that is for a good reason, but I am having a blast and am finally feeling complete. Because I now know that in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, however long it takes, wherever I end up, I will have at least tried and given it my all. With the peace of mind, no matter what happens, I am doing something that I genuinely love to do.