I set out to create this blog to document not just my mental health struggles, my procrastination and goal/task setting issues, gush about the books and shows I love or am loving but to reconnect with the writer within me.
Somewhere along the way over the years, I disconnected from that fiery drive to write that I once had.
I don’t know when exactly it happened, but I know that there were a couple of contributing factors:
Discouragement: I distinctly remember my high school careers sessions where the careers teacher would help us look for work experience, write resumes, discuss after school ended options and help us apply to universities.
On one such occasion, I remember mentioning, when asked what career I would like to have, replying that it was my goal to either be an author or an actress – the anxiety I soon developed for talking in front of crowds of people quickly killed off that dream and I didn’t give it another passing thought.
The dream to be an author, however, has never left me and so when the careers teacher told me that it was something that he didn’t think I would achieve and couldn’t do, droning on incessantly about a family member who was an author for Mills and Boons and how the writing was very formulaic and he didn’t think it was a good fit for me, I found it not only insulting but deeply wounding.
That discouragement just helped cement and reinforce my own insecurities and it’s something that I still struggle with today.
Chastisement: A number of years ago, I attempted to complete a Bachelor of Writing and Editing at university before ultimately dropping my studies in order to stay at home with my mother and help support and care for my father, who, at the time needed round the clock care as he was suffering from emphysema (which wasn’t helped by his paranoid schizophrenia.)
Before I left my studies, however, there was one teacher who really took a sledgehammer to my writer’s confidence.
For one writing assignment, I’d decided to submit a short piece from a larger work that I had been working on, because it fit the parameters of the assignment and let’s be real, it meant there was one less assignment that I had to stress over.
The short piece was from a work that I’d titled ‘Days of Our Bogans,’ and the story centered around a toxic family group with a conservative, robust but absentee father, a mother striving to keep the peace and make everyone around her happy and constant feuding siblings.
The scene from this piece of work that I’d chosen to submit was a segment where two of the feuding siblings, sisters, were fighting and swearing at each other because the older sister had slept with the younger sister’s boyfriend, who also happened to be her boyfriend’s brother and was now pregnant.
I submitted this piece of writing with the firm belief that I’d receive high marks. It was good writing, I was sure of it. I’d read the work over a number of times, even reading out loud before I submitted it so I was sure that I’d get a high mark or at least a passable grade.
Instead, I got abysmally bad marks.
Why?
The teacher gave me low marks because the father figure in the story, upon hearing the fighting – commented not upon the fight itself or about the context of the fight but about the language being used.
I was stunned.
The teacher commented on the paper that no father would react like that.
Speechless, simply speechless.
All I could think was, ‘my dad would react like that,’ and he was exactly who I had based the father figure on. I knew exactly how he would have reacted in this situation and I used that in the story.
I was incensed.
At the same time, this commentary, while helping me to develop thicker skin when it comes to my writing and teaching me that I shouldn’t read any potential reviews of stories I write, also undermined my confidence in my writing skills.
I started to question whether I could adequately portray human interactions and induce emotional connectivity with a reader audience.
On one hand, I knew that the teacher was wrong and that she’s not the sole authority on how people act and react to all situations but still, there was that lingering doubt.
So it was, that after these negative experiences, I began to disengage with that writer’s drive time and again and retreated, as I am prone to do, into the escapism of reading.
Now I’m at this point in my life where I want to reconnect with the writer within me.
I want to start stretching my writing muscles and develop a solid writing foundation.
This blog, writing these journal-like entries, though more different and varied content is on the horizon, is just one of the ways in which I’m hoping to reignite that writer’s fire.
The creative spark in me never left but now I’m hoping to turn that spark to flame.
I’ve set up a visual inspiration story board on the back of my bedroom door with visuals for 4 different stories on it.
1 of the stories will be a Charmed Legacy Fanfic, because the original Charmed is still one of my favourite shows.
3 of the stories will be adult urban fantasy/romantasy stories.
I’m in the process of outlining one of the urban fantasy/romantasy stories along with the Charmed Legacy Fanfic.
With the fanfic, I’m going to really stretch my creative muscles and attempt to write the story in 1st person, something that I’ve always struggled with in creative writing as it’s never come easy to me – I’m not sure why I struggle to write 1st person so much, maybe it’s because the foundational books that developed the reader in me were mostly written in 3rd person, who knows? Either way, I’m choosing to strengthen my creative writing skills by developing this skillset.
It’s my plan to focus on sitting down to write in some format each day, whether that’s a blog post or writing a scene from a story or even a paragraph or sentence – I just want to be writing every day and hopefully, train my brain to write every day.
Fingers crossed.
Are there any tips or tricks for reigniting the drive to write or setting a good, solid writing routine/foundation in place that you can think of?
I’d love to hear any ideas that you have.
Kit's Corner of Chaos 