Sometimes it takes time to feel comfortable with your voice. Don't wait twenty years or thirty years, as I did, to lift it up. It's not a competitive sport. It's a yoga of the mind. Maybe it's fun for onlookers to kibitz as the newbie attempts, say, the lotus seat, and the one who is trying may look silly and unaccomplished in the process. It can be the very same with writing.
Much writing is not so much performance as being, I think. A lot of people might miss that distinction.
It is a way of being yourself, who you are at a point in time. Perhaps there are born writers, but from my experience, the process takes plenty of time and practice.
Of course, you need to really write. Spilling your guts is good. If you're worried about idiots and would-be critics, lock your posts.
I feel like lately I'm comfortable with my voice the way people are comfortable singing if it's just in the shower. I write what I want and how I want in private journals, and months, years, later, I don't care if it was wonderful or not, just that it was mine.
I suppose it's just the idea of people seeing my most raw work that makes it feel less like mind yoga, but the writing will never be pure if I'm restricted too much by that.
I think I should put some of that kind of writing out there, though, not just to get more comfortable with my writing but with myself. I think your idea about locking some of my posts is a really good one. Possibly I will filter quite tightly at first, then ease into a larger audience.
When I was younger, it was too easy for me to allow my creative spirit to be crushed. It was a tender, trembling mimosa. And any criticism was too harsh and would shut me down with writer's block for years. It's okay to have missteps. Just about all the writing we see in books and magazines has been submitted to the editorial process, which gives us a peculiar idea about what raw writing is supposed to be. Perfect?
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Much writing is not so much performance as being, I think. A lot of people might miss that distinction.
It is a way of being yourself, who you are at a point in time. Perhaps there are born writers, but from my experience, the process takes plenty of time and practice.
Of course, you need to really write. Spilling your guts is good. If you're worried about idiots and would-be critics, lock your posts.
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I suppose it's just the idea of people seeing my most raw work that makes it feel less like mind yoga, but the writing will never be pure if I'm restricted too much by that.
I think I should put some of that kind of writing out there, though, not just to get more comfortable with my writing but with myself. I think your idea about locking some of my posts is a really good one. Possibly I will filter quite tightly at first, then ease into a larger audience.
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