Twenty-five years ago I wrote rarely. That is, I wrote rarely with pen and paper or on a keyboard.
I often thought of things I would have written. I don’t mean that I thought, “I should write a story about some cats who tried to change their world.” I mean I used to think long segments of stories that I made up, stopping and fixing things in my mind as I went.
I’d churn out paragraphs of stuff, maybe good enough to be written down and shared with the world, but since I didn’t consider myself a writer I didn’t think that was true at the time.
Then came opportunity
Being in the company of people who were charged with writing things for others, I was sometimes asked to listen to stuff that had been written. I would often say things like, “That’s cool, but I’d say …” or tell them they might want to change this word to that or this sentence to something else or these three paragraph to this one sentence and then add this paragraph.
Eventually it came to the point when people would ask me to write things. If it seemed trivial enough I’d do it. I didn’t want to be responsible for writing something that was important.
Eventually I took on a job writing articles for a small and fluffy publication. I won’t name the thing, I’m thankful for the way they treated me, not well, but not poorly. And the respect they showed for my writing made me question my disrespect of it.
So I took a course
I took a freelancing course and of course I applied what I learned and was pleasantly surprised to find an acceptance email in my inbox on my third or fourth query to a glossy publication.
And I wrote several articles and was paid nicely for them.
But you know how I said “writing is life” up there in the headline? Well, sometimes life gets in the way of life … or, something like that. I had a bit of a major setback in my life, and I kind of fell off the face of the earth. My wife passed away.
I changed directions …
I headed down instead of onward. But I didn’t fall far. I just … started a new life. I began a novel. I started writing lyrics. I began to perform music publicly.
I applied my writing skills to all of this. My “pen on paper” skills were applied to pages of novel material (none of which has been published yet) and my writing in my mind led to stage banter that was off the cuff and still as well crafted as I could make it.
I needed a new place to live socially and these new outlets gave me that. The article writing suffered though.
But still, the truth remains. I continue to write, and the title stands as proven … writing is life.
At least, it is for me.
