If I Look Like One, Maybe I’ll Be One.

by Leave a Comment

I have an addiction. An addiction to blogs. And not just any blogs. Design blogs. Fashion blogs. It’s a wonderful thing to be addicted to – I can preoccupy myself by reviewing others who dress better, design better, than myself. They have the money and the means to wear all the things I can’t and drape their house in fabrics and furniture and prints that I can only dream of. And the blogs themselves – gorgeous!
I have visions of making my own blog easier on the eye than what I have at this moment. My hope is that before the end of the year, I’ll have a custom design for my blog to introduce to you. A friend is working on it for me, and I can’t wait until that day when my writing finally has a space that visually reflects the same quality.
However, like any addiction, my design-blog obsession has distracted me from what I really want, which is to delve deeper into the world of self-published writing. I’ve found a plethora of writing blogs, but I hardly ever read them because the designs are often nothing less than detestable. I don’t care if you’re the greatest writer to come along since Shakespeare. If you’ve posted your words in lime green over a cerulean background, I won’t get past the title before I click over to something more appealing. (Is there something wrong with taking the basic templates and messing with the color? Live a little, people.)
And so, I have this fear: if my blog isn’t visually appealing, it’s not worth reading no matter how well I write. Which means that my real problem boils down to this thought:
Maybe if I look like a writer, I’ll become one.
I hinge my success on how I appear to others. I may write well for my blog, but to be a successful blogger, I need to grab your attention, right?
Understandable. Proven fact with world wide web analytics. “Content is king” doesn’t matter if no one can read it.
But I can’t allow that to be my excuse not to write, right? Waiting for a better blog design is not a good reason to refrain from posting.
Once again, I find myself peeling back the layers of unnecessary negativity in my life in order to see what’s really there. Underneath it all, I have something good going for me and I need to unearth it. I need to let it out. I need to write. I need to create. I need to share it with others.
Here are some posts that have propelled me forward in my hope for my writing:
Jess Constable at Makeunder My Life has a fresh batch of wisdom every day – I can’t get enough. Read her post about why managing your business is like high school (no cringing necessary!)
Jon Acuff has some interesting things to say about selling out. What is your definition of a sell out? How do you impose that on others, and how do you allow others to impose their opinions on you?
A bad review isn’t the end of the world, right?
I found this blog today – I need more poetry in my life. And maybe I should start posting photos from my idea journal… what do you think?
Tools for writers. Exactly what I need.

Poem : To My Dear and Loving Husband.

by Leave a Comment

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and this poem always stops my heart with the last line. It’s not icky sweet; it’s bold and eternal and it calls us to a higher understanding of love than how we feel in the moment. It asks us to create a legacy that lives on after we’re gone, a love story for the ages.
Do you have a favorite love poem?
To My Dear and Loving Husband

BY ANNE BRADSTREET

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay;
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.

Learn more about the poem here. Wedding photo from this talented dude.

Stranger Than Fiction.

by Leave a Comment

I’ve decided to stop fighting it.
What exactly? I was driving home yesterday contemplating, once again, my writing woes. My ever-encouraging twitter friend, Friederike, tweeted a word to me the other day:
“Very often, our characters tell us what they are up to. We must take our time and wait a little to find out what they want.”
And then, in response to my whiny, “But what to do while I wait for them to speak to me?” Friederike said, “Have a coffee and watch your soul while you are waiting for your characters to do the work.”
Again, an all too wise response to my needlessly worrisome writing self. At that point, I was asking myself what characters are speaking to me. Do I even have any? I was never planning on being a fiction writer. But is that what she meant, and does fiction versus nonfiction make any difference here?
In the midst of my brain working through this idea, my ears were half-listening to my car radio, which was faithfully playing NPR’s All Things Considered. The host was interviewing a writer that just published a new novel. What was his inspiration and theme behind the book, she asked? I was suddenly all ears.
The writer explained that his work centered around the belief that home is not always where we are most welcome or a place that we can take refuge from a misunderstanding world. What happens to people who live with that discord?
For reasons I cannot explain, his description of pulling together his ideas into a novel pulled together my own disjointed ideas about what it means to write.
I’ve been fighting for a long time the idea that I should write fiction. It seems to me that any attempt I’ve made is not literary, but a deep-seeded and irresistible need to reconcile misunderstandings in my life – people, experiences, memories, social, political and religious issues. Every version of my fiction has been some attempt to tie those things together so that I can make sense of them, or remove them from myself. Like Dumbledore’s Penseive, my writing extracts those things that will not rest within myself until they’ve poured out of me onto the page in black and white, where I can examine every detail. (Kudos to J.K. Rowling for that concept. I wonder if she ever thought about that in terms of her own writing experience?)
This isn’t right, I tell myself. Great writers don’t turn their lives into fiction for a good story. There’s always that speculation that something within their works – a character or a scene or a setting is a fictionalized, dramatized version of something real to the author. But many authors would, and have, denied those theories outright. And then the critics and readers idolize them: “He’s just that genius that the work is entirely fictional!”
Underneath the guise of literary genius, every good piece of writing has soul, and what is soul but personality, your collection of beliefs, experiences, passions, and talents that are not quite like anyone else’s?
This is what I’m not going to fight anymore: you, dear readers, friends, loves of my life (and people I might not necessarily get along with) are the interesting characters that fill my thoughts and speak to me. Experiences and memories, you are a part of who I am. I am passionate about you. I am inspired by you. I know you and you know me. You drive me to words. Black, white, gray, and every color and shade in between. You speak to my soul, and I’m listening, truly listening now.
After all, life is stranger than fiction, right? So don’t be surprised if some version of you lies within my words. I won’t be surprised, anymore. I may not pen the great American novel any time soon, or ever, but this is what I know.
I won’t go against the grain anymore, for you are ingrained in me.