Writing & When is Enough
Writing for me came on like a bad itch that I could not scratch. I could not write well enough, use the right verb tenses (still struggling with this one), and never thought my imagery was good enough or the energy of my piece was palpable enough. Some writing pieces just had no heart, some had no voice, and some no pulse and they needed to be shot into the ozone of the recycle basket and immediately dumped into the ether world. Sometimes writing is a chore, sometimes it is a gift, but always it is necessary!
People ask me all the time how I knew I wanted to write. I earned my English B.A. in June of 2016, and we can say that gave me the gumption to write, but honestly didn't I just write for four years. Yes my writings were based off readings and research, but I was the one who's voice came through and I was the one who put all those millions (yes millions) of words together coherently and I was the one who earned that high GPA for it. Now my writing these days is not born from a professor telling me to do it, but from a place in my heart and head that says you have something worthy to share.
Sharing my words with the world, I believe is a gift. I feel like yes everything has been said before, but not through my voice and not through my eyes. Yes the girl fell in love with the guy and ended up alone and out in the middle of her old home town to discover a new love when she opened a bakery, but she did not with my words, with my twist, with my flare! Words and the people who make them come together beautifully is well what I do.
Now part of the title is When is Enough, so when do you decided you have made it as a writer. Is it when you get one article published, is it when you receive an award for your first book, or is it when you finish all your edits and revisions and publish it with a publishing house. It could be when you self publish, or when you are writing for numerous sites, or perhaps it happens when you are the top best seller list for whatever year you wrote your book it.How do writers say enough, I am enough, I have achieved my dream as a writer and now I am golden? Well let me say there is no AHA moment when you realize enough has happened and you are at your pinnacle. When you get an award, you strive to write better, when you hit a top ten book list, you strive for #1 slot, when you have out three books, the voices in your head say keep going and so there is never an "Enough" moment. We, as writers, WRITE!
Writing what is in your soul, in your heart, or in your head is what keeps us writings going. We write to get out our stories,what we feel, what we want to say, and we do it over and over and over. I am an avid Virginia Woolf fan, have been for a decade at least. I strive to write differently. I blame her works. One of her works, Mrs. Dalloway, is written within one day. It starts when the day begins and ends the same night after a party. Woolf and her writing are very different in their style then a lot of writers today and I strive to push the limits of my own writing as she did with hers. I love to write a story as if my character is telling of their past. They are thinking back for the first part and a jolt is sent into the story and they are back in the present. I try to jump into the middle of a story as if it is the beginning. I have learned the boundaries and now I push and stretch them out.
Writing is a game, like chess, the pieces can only move into certain spaces, but which pieces you move and the order you move them in is up to you, but you must stay on the board (page) and you must use your tools like pieces (pens or keyboard) in such a way that your piece comes alive for others to read. Writing one piece is not enough, thirty are not enough, you write and write and write some more. Little by little the voices in your head subside, but if you do not write again soon they will be screaming until you get them down again. Woolf, I am sure, had Mrs. Dalloway floating in her mind for a long time. Characters begin with us, develop with us, and then come out from us.
Writing is a game in which I CHOOSE to win, not a thing I do that will soon be enough and I will be done.
Happy Writing to you all!
Your story teller/poet
Debbie
xoxo
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