Yesterday a student said to me, "I want you to write me something for me to read." This really hit me because little did she know, I have been thinking about writing a lot recently. I have been thinking that I desperately miss being able to create something truly unique with only my words.
I told my student what I tell everyone, "I am too busy. I don't have time to write." It is true that since entering college in 2007 the number of times I have written has slowly but surely dwindled. Minus, of course, that brief time my sophomore year when I had been writing a blog post every day. It is true that I spend most of my weekdays working 7-3(sometimes later, sometimes I get out earlier). It is true that I come home from work, cook dinner, and pass out on the couch most nights. It is also true that all of my housework gets done on Sundays and that on Saturdays I hang out on my bed, in my pjs, grading papers until Garrett gets home from work. I fill my every day life with work. And tv. And Garrett. And pictures of my two cats (don't judge, they are adorable!).
But in the back of my mind this excuse has never completely assuaged my guilt over not writing. I know that if it was really as important to me as it used to be then I would write. I would make time to write.
I thought about that concept today. I thought about making time to write. I even thought about sending out some writing pieces. But then I had a new thought. I had not written anything new in... well, I wasn't sure how many years it had been. I couldn't remember when I had written last. And I wasn't sure that I still could. What if I sat down to write and what came out wasn't any good? What if nothing at all came out? I know that I have changed a lot in the last 8 years. My writer's voice surely must have changed too. So what if I sat down to write something and I couldn't find that voice again? What if I no longer had anything to say? These thoughts were terrifying to me.
But then I remembered the blog I mentioned previously. The one I had started my sophomore year of college. I remembered how when I first started the blog it was hard because I wasn't sure what to write about. I remembered how for the first few posts I would stare at the computer screen for hours waiting for inspiration to come to me. But after a while inspiration did come. And the more I wrote, the easier writing became. Soon I was not only writing a blog post every day but I was writing poems and short stories again too.
That is the thing about writing. If you want to be a good writer then you have to write every day. Even if what you are writing is crap. Even if no one else on the planet is ever going to see what you are creating. If you want to be a writer then the only way to not be a writer is to not write at all.
So I am starting this blog. This is my first baby step to getting back to writing. This blog is here to help me share my thoughts and feelings with the universe and to help me find my writer's voice, my roar, again. It is also here to help me begin to gain followers. I am hoping to start other blogs in time that will be about more specific things. I am hoping I can get enough followers that I can add Google AdSense to one or more of my blogs and maybe make some money. I am also hoping that I will start writing stories and poems again. I would like to send submissions out.
But one step at a time.
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