Aspirations as a Vocal Creator

Blank pages are potential whilst also an indication of lacking. But therein lies the crucible for my aspirations with Vocal in 2024.

To fully understand, we will need to start at the beginning.

I have called myself a writer for so many years that the origin has faded into fable, yet somehow the act of creation persists as one of the most rewarding and equally daunting things to face. It is strange to identify a key element of oneself, something I align some level of ‘purpose’ or ‘identity’ with, that is also something I struggle with on a foundational level.

In school I discovered that I wrote to evoke, that emotions held power and I wanted to be someone who could make others feel, make them understand things they may not or on another level than before. I wrote purely from fiction, blending imagination and empathy when it came to emotions that even I lacked any true understanding of. I wrote to create discourse and shock, I wrote to bring forth tears and sometimes laughter, I wrote to make people shift in their seats with discomfort or disbelief. I wrote in a voice tortured or aged beyond my years, not to say the stories were brilliant but that the topics I chose may have raised eyebrows or caused the board at school to mutter with concern. There was death and abuse and sex and horror splashed on pages that I bid my friends read just so I could watch them react to see if I had done it right and I was mollified by their reactions.

But as we all know, who we are in school and who we truly are, can be vastly different or at the least can change as time passes. I grew distant from everyone, circumstance and a meeting with the ol’ cloud of depression saw my ink run dry, my thoughts fade and my inspirations buried beneath the numbness of adolescent turmoil and the harshness of reality.

There was a small break in the stupor, I met a man that I grew to love but at the time my own emotions tormented and confounded me. This is where my “Anxty (Angsty) Scribbles” came into play, this was my prose era where ‘Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner’ inspired words spoke of woe and wonder and questions without answers.

Eventually they dried up and we found a chaotic kind of contentment but that pesky cloud still hovered and the solar flare of emotions I'd catalysed into literature was dimmed once again.

For years I cringed when I told people I was a writer but couldn’t recall the last time I’d even put words on a page, let alone completed something.

That changed in May of 2021 when I accidentally stumbled upon a Vocal challenge: Color is Pride: True Colors - and so, I wrote.

And I was PROUD.

This one small moment started something, it was slow at first, I submitted stories of old that I needed to shake dust from but it continued and it grew. I became a Vocal Plus subscriber, I entered challenges, my writing was noticed. Even just one read gave me a boost of joy, I felt seen, I felt heard. I was inspired.

In 2021, shortly after signing up, a friend shared a outsourced competition with me to write 20 poems in 20 days-you'd get published if you succeeded, and so I did. I wrote poem after poem in notebooks, on scrap paper, I even had to fill margins with ideas. I was a powerhouse and a published poet by 2022.

I also started writing a book, 30 thousand words before I ran out of steam (though I still have hope to continue it one day). In 2023 I joined a writers group and we're moving into publication this year! I kept trying Vocal challenges and following prompts and even got a top story and a runner-up placement in another.

What I am saying is that Vocal gave me back my inspiration, handed me a blank peice of paper and said write and I did. When I find it tough, I write to their promts (like this one) so that I can get words on a page and feel good about it.

So my aspirations for 2024 is to continue striving for the potential Vocal has offered.

I want to write Sci-Fi for my writers group and step outside my comfort zone.

I want to continue to improve my grammer.

I want to enter as many compititions as I can, in as many varied forms as they supply, so I can test myself and push myself to be MORE.

I want to pick up my book and keep going.

I want to inspire someone else.

I want to make other creators feel seen like I did at the start (and continue to today.)

The most ambitious aspiration I have this year is to place in the top 3 of a compitition, to write something Vocal is proud of as a thank you for what they have provided me and to many other creators.

Most of all, I aspire to be the writer that a little girl dreamt of being all those years ago.