Growing with the Flow

This year, I am continuing my quest of becoming a doer. I aspire to treat Vocal with this same commitment to jump right in and see through my works to completion. I aim to complete every challenge (within reason for myself). Even if I do not submit my piece to the challenge while it is open, I will hold myself accountable to publishing it after I complete it nonetheless. My main goal for this year of creating and sharing on Vocal is to follow through with my creations and complete the pieces I have previously started, but that have been sitting unfinished - in some cases, even just a concept - for quite a while.

Over the past year on Vocal, my stack of unfinished stories has grown consistently. Whenever I do publish a story, I notice that it is read and interacted with very soon after I post it. Every time I see that, I am motivated to share more of my work with the world. This year, I am determined to be more consistent with publishing my pieces. I aim to post at least three pieces of writing to Vocal every month - including my entries to the challenges as they come up. I am also determined to complete all of my stories that I have sitting in limbo in my drafts folder on Vocal and actually get them published. Specifically, it is extremely important to me to finish writing the piece that I started for a challenge three years ago now; it is about suggestions on what sustainable swaps people can make in their everyday lives. Sustainability is incredibly important to me and I have a lot to say on the matter. That led to the piece becoming very long and when I realized that it might be good to split it into several pieces, I stopped to assess it and ended up letting it fall by the wayside. Since it has now been years since I started that piece, I am sure that I will have a lot of edits to make as well as new information to add to it. As I move forward with my writing, I think it will be incredibly helpful to read through all of my Vocal pieces thus far to see the evolution of my writing over the last few years.

In the spirit of being a more active Vocal member, I also plan on reading more stories by my fellow Vocal creators. Specifically, I will read through all of my sister's pieces published here. My sister is Hailey Marchand-Nazzaro and I highly recommend reading her works. She started publishing on Vocal at the same time I did. I have already read most of her pieces, but I am so excited to read any and all of her works that I might have missed out on earlier and all of her works to come. I adore the way she creates such vivid feelings in her writing and is able to so beautifully take her reader on an emotional journey with her. It is a true joy for me to get a glimpse into her creative mind every time I read her pieces and I advise that you check her out too. It would be great to perhaps collaborate with her on a piece or a few in the near future.

While it is a wonderful feeling to learn more about people I know in my life through reading their work, it is also really special to get to know people solely through their writing. To further my Vocal-exclusive relationships, I plan to read at least five entries by other creators for each challenge. I want to connect more with my subscribers and those that I subscribe to and I plan to make an effort to explore their works more moving forward.

In terms of what exactly I will be writing in 2024, I intend to spend a lot of time further exploring my poetry writing. Poetry is probably my favorite form of writing and definitely a strong suit of mine. I have a tendency to write free verse poetry (it's my sweet spot), but I would like to try following more structured forms of poetry more frequently this year. I would love to explore, in more depth, the villanelle and the pantoum. In terms of prose, I would really like to work on including dialogue more seamlessly into my pieces. I often find it difficult to tie in without creating a choppy feeling to the piece. I find it to be a very impressive skill to be able to weave conversations throughout a piece with style and grace.

Overall, I aspire to establish my voice more on Vocal. I want to leave an impact on my readers - cause them to really think deeply about their place in the world and their connection to everything that's going on around us all. I hope that, more than anything, my writing makes people feel, think, and adjust. I aspire for my writing to aid in the evolution of both me and my readers.