Start with one word. Write
The library is mostly quiet except for the air conditioner rattling. I am sitting in the sun, the only open space with an outlet at my local library on this Saturday in March. Victoria Christopher Murray, co-author of The Personal Librarian, gives this advice to writers: Read and Write. If you treat your writing like a hobby, it will be nothing more than a hobby. Treat it like a job. Commit. Write daily. Read, even if the writing is poor, it will teach you what not to do. So, I am here to write. She said just start with a word. One word.
To me, best-selling authors are bold, feisty and enterprising. Qualities I bring to the page may not fit those adjectives. I will let the readers decide.
What I have decided is I will write, I will write from my heart, from my questioning thoughts, from my experiences and from nudges received from the universe. Looking in old file folders, in boxes stored in the closet, there are poems, essays, thoughts written, some never shared. Perhaps I will collect them all in one place as evidence for myself that Yes, I am a writer.
Why do I need evidence? Think of your favorite writer. Do they write mysteries, romance, historical fiction, self-help books, poetry? As in other parts of my life, there is not a genre I fit into nice and neatly. I am the writer whose heart is sometimes bursting with feelings that I want someone else to feel as well. Sometimes, I cannot find the words to speak. The words only come in written form. Sometimes I want to share an experience from my life and how it worked out and say this might work for you as well.
When my life gets feeling hard and hopeless, I want to write. When my life is overflowing with excitement, I want to write. When I learn that my inner self can be at peace no matter what the external circumstances are, I want to write about that too.
Today, I see the tape measure of my life and it appears that most of it is behind me now. Yet, I am fascinated by what may lie ahead. I want more fun, more adventures, more victories, more precious moments, more random coincidences. I want to meet people who are intelligent, brave, funny, wise, optimistic, quick-witted. I want to learn, explore, take risks, and watch the sun rise.
My younger self wanted to “save the world”. Run schools and orphanages and build medical clinics and to be extraordinary. I did not know that there would be days, months, seasons when the most extraordinary thing to do was breathe and not give up. So being older and wiser, I know that although I never did the big something, the small acts of kindness mattered.
I will keep writing. I invite you to come along, join me. There is no money back guarantee but I do promise to uplift, provoke, delight and inspire you through this imperfectly, wondrous future.
