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I’ve done it again! I’ve signed up for a new Writing 101 class on Finding Everyday Inspiration. Why I did that since we’re going to be gone for a week to Maryland to meet our new granddaughter in the middle of it is a mystery to me, but I’ll figure it out how to make it work.

Of course the first assignment WOULD have to be I WRITE BECAUSE…! Deja vu! Been there, done that, but what the heck! I’ll give it another shot. Maybe in list form this time. So here goes…

Writing 101: Finding Everyday Inspiration, Assignment 1 — I write because…
Why do you write? This is a question you can answer again and again, as your response might evolve over time. You may have already addressed it in a previous blog post. Some bloggers also use this question, and variations of it, to shape their bios and About pages. Why am I here? Who am I? Why do I blog?

* * * * *

Why-I-Write

There are many, many reasons why I write.

— I write to hear myself think. It’s so noisy in my head most of the time my entire thought process just recedes into the background, runs and hides. When that happens, the only way to retrieve it is to find and pull it out kicking and screaming if needs be. Once I have it trapped on the paper it can’t escape my notice again!

— So I write to understand myself; to gain perspective, to bleed off negative emotions, and to recognize the miraculous in my life. To make sense of the things going on in my life. And most importantly, to confirm my belief that life isn’t futile, that each of us are important and are part of something bigger — part of each other.

— Because of that, I write to document my journey as it’s unique from everyone else’s.

— But even more importantly, I write because it seems crucial to me that others know that, too. Thus, I write to be understood, to make connections with people. I want to encourage them, to show them there is a flow in life and they’re part of it. They matter, and it’s their journey that is relevant and significant, not the destination. After all, no matter where we go in life, there we are! But how we got there is our special story. Be it mine or theirs.

— Of all the people I write for, my family is always uppermost in my mind. My siblings and I didn’t know my mother well. She was a very private and unhappy person. We never knew why because she’d never talk about it. When I’m gone, I don’t want my kids to wonder who I was. I want them to know me, inside and out, and understand they were the very best part of who I was.

There are other random reasons that I write, of course.

— My dad was a beautiful writer and there’s a lot of him in me trying to get out.

— I’m a person of faith (though it’s very shaky at times). I believe human beings were made in the image of God. ALL of us. And God was a CREATOR. I want to be a creator, too.

— I write because it feels physical to me. I love the scratching sound the pen makes on the notebook paper when I’m writing in my journal. My hands “itch” to feel that smooth surface beneath them, the heft of the pen in my hand. Irish songwriter, composer, novelist, and painter of portraits, Samuel Lover said:

When the itch of literature comes over a man [or woman!], nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen.

— As of the last year I’ve begun writing on my laptop also. I enjoy watching my hands dance across the keyboard, feeling the buttons, being able to close my eyes and still feel the passion I’m writing about as I type a word or a sentence. Always a frustrated musician, THIS is the way I make my music.

— And before I started blogging I would have said I’m looking for that one special story inside of me that will bite me in the kiester someday and beg to be written! Funny, but I don’t think that’s true so much anymore. It seems as if it doesn’t matter WHAT I write, only THAT I write.

And that’s the biggest reason I write — because I can’t NOT write. When I try to suppress the need to get the words out, I feel absolutely autistic, frustrated and trapped in my own little bubble where others don’t know, see, or hear me. But even worse, neither do I.

For me the most comforting thing in the world is to KNOW and be KNOWN for who I truly am…