Making A Note

Coffee and Notes

It hasn’t been easy going for me in the writing department. I have been doing some soul searching and the burdens that I’ve carried for the longest time are coming to the surface. As I peel back those layers, I’ve come to realize a few things. Mainly that I am much stronger than I think I am. Also that I have endured a lot of abuse – mostly mental and verbal, but some physical.
That’s a hard load to pull along with you. I wish it were as easy as just leaving it behind. But the reality of it is that it shapes us. We have control over how we react to it, yes, but once you’ve been hurt, you’re not going to rush back into a situation that hurt you again.

Somehow along the way, my writing journey became wrapped up in that. I know I have endured enough crap from people I admired and that really hurts. I’ve also come to realize that I’m not writing for myself anymore. When I felt a huge disconnect between my story and myself, that triggered my introspection about why. It wasn’t NaNo. It wasn’t even that I hurt physically. It was I was telling a story that I didn’t believe in anymore. That I didn’t give a crap about my characters, and that shocked me.

These characters have been with me over two decades. For me to suddenly be as dispassionate as I was about them made me say “Okay, time to sit down and do some more thinking about this.”

I now have a game plan about what I’m going to do about it.

This is step one. I need to write for myself again. I need to get my structure back into where I used to have it.