I have been disconnected from my writing for the last six months or so for various reasons. I am working on finding my way back to it and I think starting a little blog is a step on that path. To write about the writing. To write about the chasm between myself and my novels. To be vulnerable with other writers and admit that sometimes the writing is hard and impossible feeling.
I have been writing on and off my entire life. I’ve always been entranced by stories and knew I wanted to be a writer when I was a small child. I loved coming up with little stories in my head and was constantly reading. Writing is in my blood.
So it’s hard to sit here and admit to myself that I’ve turned away from it because it got hard. It got scary. It got vulnerable.
Being a student of the Author Academy was an absolute blessing and I would do it all over again if I had the chance. PACK IT IN wouldn’t be as far as it is if I hadn’t taken the leap to do the Academy. I’m in love with the story it’s grown into and am proud of it. On the other hand, it’s gotten more vulnerable and tender. There’s more of me poured into it and I am terrified to share those glimpses of my soul with readers. Will they recognize those vulnerable moments? I don’t know. But I will know. And that scares me.
I have struggled with the idea that this is the purpose of ART. That being a writer, an artist, is to share our vulnerabilities in some ways and that is how we connect with our audiences. Our books are ways of saying “See? You’re not alone. I feel this way too.” How many times, as a reader, have I felt that connection? To be able to gift it to someone else is magical to me. But I never thought about how it would feel as a writer to do that. I never thought about what people meant when they described writing as “bleeding on the page”.
The writing got hard and I am returning to it anyway. I am going to hold those vulnerabilities with one hand and write with the other. I am going to pick PACK IT IN up again and get it into querying shape. Perhaps I can query by the end of the year. It is only March, after all. I’m not setting too many goals for myself right now beyond “write”. Something, anything. Even this blog post is more writing than I’ve done in months. And that is a success of its own.