What I Hope to get out of Writing

I love being creative and for me as that usually means making art of some kind. I wish I could paint all day and night, it's one of the things that I do where I completely lose all sense of time and the outside world.

A couple of years ago I decided to try my hand at writing after many years of being told that I should write. It never felt natural to me.

I never considered myself to be a writer of any kind. Yet here I am.

Still relatively new to this whole venture, but dare, I must.

As an artist I've always felt that writing was something that I struggled with. Not in the technical sense but as far as it comes to expressing my emotions. To be honest the thought pretty much repels me. I'm not into that emotional stuff.

I'm not a robot of course. I have a heart inside me somewhere. It just likes to keep to itself, quietly until it's being asked a question. I've never had any issue expressing my opinions yet I suppose in my mind I didn't think of writing in that sense, I looked at it from the poetic and creative sense and I already had an outlet for that.

So what has brought me to this point where I'm online sharing my thoughts and opinions or whatever?

Well, a couple of years ago someone suggested to me that I write a book. I had thought about writing a book before actually, or even a few books. I used to love writing fiction stories when I was in school and I did write some that were pretty out there, namely one about a girl with two boyfriends who ended up killing them with her pink stilettos because she found out that they were both cheating on her with each other.

Yh, I think I was about 14 when I wrote that. It was called: 'The Betrayal', I got an A* for it too. That's what I was inspired to write after having a religious education lesson about Jesus being betrayed by Judas. That was more than 20 years ago.

Back to the point, even though I had thought about writing I didn't think that non fiction would really be my thing. Mainly because I didn't feel like anyone gave a toss about what I think let alone read a book about it and on top of that I'm not an expert in anything.

Nevertheless I started writing a non fiction book and after getting to around 30k words I started to have what they call the dreaded imposter syndrome. It did interrupt my writing flow a bit but after some encouragement from other would be authors in a facebook group I kept it going.

Now I'm at the editing stage and I feel as if the book is swallowing me whole. I can find just about everything and anything in the world to distract me to not keep at it.

I've been forcing myself to do it every day even just a little. I guess now that I have to take the time to read the 40k plus words that I've written, the impostor syndrome is coming at me full force.

I recently spoke to an author who helps other authors in their writing journey and she said that writing your book should bring you joy. I have to admit that right now it's bringing me more of a headache.

In 2020 I challenged myself to write a blog post every day for 100 days on Linkedin. Some days I really felt like I was writing rubbish, and other days even though I was having a complete brain dump onto the page I felt like it was helpful in some way. I was able to get many thoughts and conversations with myself out into the open. It was the beginning of my attempt to be vulnerable (shudder).

The only people really reading my posts were my mum and sister with the occasional unique reader. My mum and sister being my greatest cheerleaders seem to only ever give me positive feedback which I of course find unacceptable. I want to improve my writing, not be told that it's good after doing it for five minutes. I want some constructive criticism, something that I can build on for my next piece of writing.

So looking back after that 100 day run of blog posts I have continued to write as much as I can daily as much as possible. I do miss some days and other days it could just be a couple of lines or a few notes jotted down but I still try to write. Of course I'd rather paint but writing is still quicker.

I also 'feel' that writing is a way for me to learn about myself more. I think I do understand myself pretty well but I think that through writing I can understand my place in the world in relation to those around me. Not in the sense that I'm looking for validation from anyone but I want to know if what I think makes sense to anyone else apart from myself.

It would also be nice to know if the little girl that was told to shut up so much during her childhood has anyone out there who wants to hear what she has to say?