Joanna, of Confident Writing, issued a group writing challenge: My Love Affair With Writing. I found it via Damien of Postcards From the Funny Farm. His poetic title is: The Way the Light and Shadow Falls: My Love Affair with Writing. What poet can resist reading something with such a poetic title? Certainly not me. Why not join us and write about your love affair with writing. I know you have one!
Writing, Life, and Me… a Love Triangle
Give me a prompt and rough poetry will follow. Give me a keyboard and I will type. I do have an excuse to offer for my affair with writing, in one word: shyness.
What I could not say in person, I could say in writing via email or a letter.
Wait, I have another excuse, but in two words: Sans interruption.
My husband and I and our son are all passionate, a bit too passionate at times if we are utterly and totally convinced we are right. My husband thinks things out s l o w l y. I swear he thinks he is playing chess in a reverse speed match. I rely more on instinct and my brain races at breakneck speeds. Words do not always keep up, neither does my brain recognize the difference between a breath between their words and my turn to talk.
Once, I wrote a letter and shoved it under the door during a “pause in communication”. It cleared my anger to a point and gave him a chance to read my words and take them in without me ruining my own defense via my not so innocent mouth. (I so wanted to write sweet innocent mouth there.)
There is another reason, perhaps more valid. The word “writer” wove in and out of my mind, but I never dared focus on it; my stilted words written in high school were a stronger memory. A few years ago emotion shoved logic aside. I wrote a memoir. Words flowed onto keyboard without as much as a brief edit.
From that point on thousands (millions?) of words came “out of nowhere”, though I know in reality it was, and is, my subconscious taking much advantage of an incredible gift of silence: my inner editor that can keep its trap shut!
I braved writing fiction. The story made sense, the conversation felt real. I DID IT! In the midst of all this I recognized my need to evoke emotions in others, especially those that had stuffed theirs in a sack somewhere. Blogging followed, NaNoWriMo took away any chance of escaping writing’s hold.
I can no longer go a day without fingering the keyboard. It is my connection to me, to emotions, to reason, to humanity. It’s been one heck of an affair, though Edit is trying to turn this into a foursome!
Marcia McLees Bogaert
02/22/08
Thank you, Joanna, for the challenge! And for bringing such a poetic title from Damien.
