I was born to write stories. This is perhaps the one true thing I know in life. I have known this since I was a little girl.
In the past few years however, I have done a lot more talking about writing than actual writing. I took a creative writing class at UBC before I moved to Hawaii and it stirred me out of the artistic doldrums I had fallen into following college. Amidst all my ‘scholarly’ writing, I lost my creative voice somewhere along the way. I forgot how it felt to write for fun. The continuing studies class at UBC proved to be what I needed. I was the youngest person in the class, but I was surrounded by others who also loved to write simply for the pure fun of it. We became a close-knit circle of strangers who encouraged, critiqued and inspired each other. I came to Hawaii renewed and invigorated, with a goal to keep writing and pursue freelance work more seriously.
I recently celebrated my two year anniversary in Hawaii, and while I have accomplished much in that time, I am not where I want to be with my writing. My journal entries are sporadic at best, and the bits and pieces of freelance work I have done hardly seem to qualify me as a writer.
Recently I came across this quote and it touched me profoundly, changing my entire perspective on writing:
If you write a story today, and you get up tomorrow and start another story, all the expertise that you put into the first story doesn’t transfer over automatically to the second story. You’re always starting at the bottom of the mountain. So you’re always becoming a writer. You’re never really arriving.
Edward P. Jones
You’re always becoming a writer. You’re never really arriving.
These words awoke me to the fact that I have been focusing on arriving. I am not embracing the becoming. Every day as a writer is a new beginning.
Beginning. Becoming. Be. Be. BE. ‘Be Here Now,’ my friend Joe’s words from long ago whisper in my ear. I need to write what I know, and what moves me in the moment.
Thus, I have etched out my little corner here, this blog, where I will write my stories, for the pure fun of it.
This is the story of me always becoming a writer.
This reminds me of our walk up Mokapu’u. We both got into our writing after that. I at least have an account. It has roughly 6 unpublished stories…and then I stopped. Things I want to write about, work, patients, relationships, adventures. The last one is easy, the first three involves lots of things that are private and potentially shouldn’t be out there, yet they are the most amazing things to write….I haven’t figured out how to do it yet. Reading your pieces, Roz, is re-inspiring me like that day we walked to the lighthouse.