Uh oh!

Another column about writing?  Well it is part of who I am. Of all the questions I get the one that most fascinates me is:

Why do you write?

Image from:
Pixabay

That was an easier question to answer in my youth.  I wrote then to release stress. As with all with all school age students, I experienced my fair share of stress, from anxiety at school, to stress at home, to fitting in.

My personal writing schedule during my time living at home became extremely important to me and I made sure I gave myself time to write every night.  I usually worked best from seven to ten, typically after I finished any homework I had for the evening. There were times during the evenings I wrote, as I’ve mentioned here previously, that I would spend the entire three or four hour time period writing something and not even be aware that I wrote ANYTHING at ALL.  Being in the flow is an amazing experience, and I hope everyone can feel that at some point in their lives.

Everyone needs to release their stress, otherwise it will eat you from the inside out.  Writing helped me deal with life.  Some people turn to destructive behavior.  I turned CONstructive. It’s why my fiction turned dark:
Haunted Houses.
Vampires, werewolves, ghosts.

But even within that darkness, there turned a positive outcome.  I may have been dealing with emotional garbage, but I also understood that life would pivot, that it would get better.  All of my dark fiction had dark elements but EVERY ONE of my stories turned positive at their resolution. Which is how my life turned.  So even during my youth, I knew that even though life wasn’t easy at the time, I only had to hang on. In my youth, writing became my crutch.  I could feel myself circling the drain when I didn’t spend time writing. I was more volatile, more distressed. Writing kept me balanced. Another surprising aspect to my writing was that I could NEVER write from a male’s point of view.  

All of my fiction uses female protagonists.  I gave sincere efforts to use a male voice on many occasions, but always failed.  Probably the same reason I have more female friends.  So many times I started a short story using a male’s voice.  I’d get through a page or two and realize that I was simply going through the motions. I wasn’t enjoying the task.  I’d stop for a time and return later and try again. It just wasn’t working. So I’d scrap the couple of pages and start again using the female voice I became comfortable with.

My writing has changed from the time I spent at it in my youth.
Now?
Well, it has transitioned to short bursts.  A page or two for the most part. Blogging has become the writing I do now.  I still NEED to write, but not for the same reasons I wrote in my youth. Writing still smooths my edges, still alleviates my stress levels.  I still understand when I’m not spending enough time tapping on the keyboard. But now I write for other reasons then simply de-stressing. I write because it’s who I am.

I’m a writer.  And as I’ve said here on multiple occasions:
A writer writes.

You may as well ask me:
Why do you breathe?

Writing IS Breathing

Since I’ve been writing for as long as I could write, with the exception of a ten year period from 2000 to 2010, it became as imperative for me to write as it is to breath.  During that ten year period I lost the itch to write and surprisingly, I didn’t even miss it.  When the gift was given back to me, I decided that I would do everything in my power to make sure I didn’t lose the desire again.

Having deadlines now also provides me an impetus.  Which is another reason blogging is a valuable tool for any new writer.  Having deadlines will surely impress upon any artist the need to produce.  A blogger should be producing and publishing on the same day every week, I’ve said it here before as well that your readers come to rely on your columns to be consistent.  So for all of these reasons and more, writing has given me the gift of my voice. Even when I have a challenge speaking on occasion, I have my writing to show my intelligence.

Since I started this column today, discussing questions writers get, I think the one question that EVERY writer bristles at is:
Where do you get your ideas?  Am I right?

I keep returning to Wisdom and Life’s previous entries here only because I’ve written so many columns that there seems to be a topic for each subject I discuss.  

Be Happy!  Be Well! Be Positive!
Blessings to you.
—
Chris

Once you realize that life is eternal,
That our souls our eternal,
That we return to light and physical over and over;
We then lose all our distress
We then lose all our fear of dying.  For there truly is no end.