Nice place you got here...

It's been... a minute.

To say there's been a lot going on is an understatement. Today, I learned about myself that when things get heavy or stressful or overwhelming, one of the first things to go by the wayside is my writing. Which seems... not great. Considering it's my biggest creative outlet. But it's work. Not in the career kind of way (unless you're going that route) but creativity is work.

I know a lot of creative types. I grew up around some weirdos and nerds and a couple of freaks and every single one of them is creative and every single one of them struggles, at some point or another, with their creativity because it is HARD. There are layers and so many decisions and judgement suppression systems to navigate.

But.

It's also worth it.

Another realization I had today (courtesy of therapy - get your therapized, peeps. You are worth it, and it does help, and it is important.) was: Years ago, I would write basically any waking moment I had free. The ideas flowed and sometimes I had too many to handle and they'd puddle up in my brain and I'd start talking aloud to myself and connect random scenes to others and on and on. Which is hard to imagine these days. Lately, since about 2014, I've turned that faucet to a different setting and poured all of my creativity into a single story.

Granted, that story turned into a trilogy of novels and is under publication contract, so I'm not that mad about it. But whenever I think about writing, I get stumped because the ideas aren't aloud to go wherever and do whatever, they have to get narrowed down and channeled into one story or another (like my Venice story, for example). That has been okay, but when I don't feel like writing for The Unwoven Tapestry trilogy, or for Venice (working title), then I fizzle out.

So.

I've decided to make space for myself. For my writing. My usual is an hour a day. If I spend that hour staring at my writing platform, okay. If I spend it describing a tree, great. If I spend it developing an angry conversation between myself an a cop who pulled me over, fine. But it's all writing. It's an invitation to the ideas. It's a reminder that I do love to write, and I'm good at it, and it's an outlet I should utilize for my sanity and mental well-being.

That's not to say I won't work on Venice - I like that story a lot. I have some ideas that I want to figure out how to implement. And of course I'm still working on The Unwoven Tapestry trilogy (Hunter releases in April and Magus releases in October!!), but I want to encourage myself to also write unrelated and unconnected, random off-the-cuff WORDS.

Let's see what happens. Could be more of these types of posts. Could be some of my philosophical considerations or struggles. Could be questioning my bias and privilege and understanding of the world. I have no idea. And that's the point.

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