The point of writing

As someone who hopes to make a career out of writing, I sure do struggle with writing.

Simply put, this mental block usually exists because I always feel like my words don’t come out the way I want them to, or how they should.

And that’s on a good day. If I’m unlucky, any and every idea I can try to even begin to formulate feels like flaming hot garbage before I even get to the stage of trying to write them down.

Writing is something that is so personal, so integral to who you are, and it takes very little for one’s confidence to be shattered. Most of the time, the little that causes my motivation and desire to keep spilling words onto paper to break is just the voice in my head, telling me things that aren’t even true.

Because that’s what depression does to you. It tells you things that aren’t true (assuming my friends and those kind people who comment on my work are telling me things that are true), but sounds so convincing that you center your whole life around it and decide to stop doing the things that you thought once made you happy. It tells you that there is no reason to write because no one cares what you have to say anyway.

My resolution for the new year is to try to stop listening to that cruel voice in my head.

I want to work on personal writing every day—no, school work doesn’t count—even if some days all I can muster is one sentence. And so far I have been successful!

I have been able to achieve this goal by working on this and other challenges, and so I plan to continue to use Vocal to help me maintain this goal, to motivate me not just with their challenges when I don't know what I should write about, but with the other many talented writers sharing their work to inspire me to try to create something even close to on par with them. By doing this, I hope to submit to every challenge this year.

I hope to also be more active with other creators on Vocal, both on the Vocal website and in the Facebook group Vocal + Assist that I am a part of. I know there are so many wonderfully creative people on there, and in my limited interaction with the page this far, I know that some of them have created prompts and informal challenges that can also help me get my creative juices flowing.

While being as involved as I would like with other creators may be hard to do when it feels like my plate is already impossibly full, I hope to start somewhere by reading and commenting on at least one submission a week.

This year, I want to surround myself with creativity. I want to start writing for me again—write on my own terms and without the main goal of receiving external validation. I want to find the joy in writing again. For what's the point of writing, if not for yourself?