Writing Evolution

My evolution as a writer began in quiet moments as I scratched out short stories in my butterfly journal. This fascination with writing morphed into making my friends write poetry or screenplays with me in junior high and high school.

Once I learned the value and malleable nature of words I found more comfort in writing rather than speaking. As an art of expression, I was better at the former. When teachers responded to my work and encouraged my writing I knew I had something akin to a gift. This gift equaled that of clay given to a potter. There was an unspoken expectation or even demand that I knead, sculpt and create something out of what I’d been given.

I graduated from college with a degree in English, Creative Writing. If I wasn’t in love with reading and writing as of yet, the affair began in earnest at this point of my life.


Then as I entered the work force all turned business. I wrote press releases, marketing pamphlets about things that bored me and I wrote newsletters, so very many newsletters. I submerged into a colder world of writing, one that I would have gladly turned my back on at any given moment. This style of writing held no dazzle and enthrallment for me. I ached to be enthralled. Instead, ache came from another source. It was as if I’d dropped an anvil in the lap of my writing dreams.


It wasn’t until I returned to the state I grew up in that my writing snapped back to life. My mind turned into a swizzle stick for stories to churn and pour on the page with deliberate effervescence. Characters barged through my routine days of mothering and I found myself at a crossroads where I needed to either entertain them and kindly invite them in or I could belligerently and begrudgingly slam the door in their faces. I’ve never been a supporter of rudeness. I flung wide the doors. And as doors so often do one led to another, then to another. A corridor of doors and stories swept ajar in my brain, intentional words racing on the computer screen, now waiting to be published.

My short stories, devotionals, inspirational essays, how-to articles, book reviews, blog posts and poems have had their day in the sun. They are tan and content, though in all likelihood they’ll continue to take in the heat. They’ve seen the glowing rewards, the buttery crisp afterglow of being on the page. But now it’s time for the characters, those identifiable, lovable, though at times scratchy as a Brillo Pad men, women and children to rub the sleep from their eyes, walk into the light of day and be startled by all that’s out there. It’s time for my characters to be singed, while simultaneously deliciously enticed by the kiss of sun on their faces as they sprawl out in a book waiting to be read. Waiting for you to read them.

It is time…

*photos by flickr

** I'll be over at Live Beautiful later today.