Why did I stop writing?
It’s a question that has been sitting with me over the last year as this account sat untouched in the midst of nursing school and various other life events that took place between May of last year and now. My writing has been rather nonexistent as of late, with many abrupt beginnings and no real resolutions. Losing the time and the muse to write has left me feeling rather unbalanced. In being honest with myself, the answer I arrive at is that unmanaged emotion simply took over and crowded out any opportunity for creative freedom that I had energy for. I have never consumed as much content in my life as I have over the last three years. In fact, sometimes the sheer amount of content I consume is overwhelming on its own and I die a little inside just thinking about it.
Why do I want to come back to writing?
Writing is somewhere at the core of who I am. Before my high school years, I dreaded all forms of writing. I preferred to read other people’s work and not have to formulate my own. However, that changed for me at some point during my sophomore year and I enjoyed writing in all its forms, even writing assignments in school. From there, I have laced words together on various topics, in print online and written on paper. I have filled multiple notebooks through the years. So to be cut off, to find writing a tedious task has been painful. However, in this present season, I am learning so much about who I am and I find that once again, I wish to turn to words to reshape and sculpt the person I am becoming. Not only do I discover who I am in journal entries and research papers, but I also find myself in the stories I write.
So, what is the plan moving forward?
Mainly, it’s to write. I just need to get back into writing itself, to create a time and space for it that allows me to simply be creative. It also means that I need to let go of the inner critic voice and embrace vulnerability again. My writing isn’t what it once was, but it’s not meant to be stagnant. Change and growth are things I want to see in my life, even in how I write and the words I pick. And starting now is better than never. It’s also just a few weeks before the start of Inktober and I’d like to set a goal of trying to write 31 stories or poems in 31 days. I hope to continue growing and I hope that you will join along with me as I write.
Until the next post…
Little Silver Leaf 