Ode to writing. No promises, though.

I've never been a great journal writer. I've come to learn that it is partially because my mind flows far too quickly for my hands to keep up--so I'll get halfway through a paragraph while journaling, and then get so lost in some secondary thought that I will completely forget what was supposed to come next on paper. I get frustrated with the time it takes to record thoughts using only a pen and paper. It is tragic, really, because I am a thorough, hard and fast, rose-doodling, rain-kissing, love-lettering romantic, and the thought of a scratchy pen filling up a soft, off-white piece of paper (if we're being idyllic, by candelight), sends romantic shivers through my fingertips. But it's just not that practical. Nor fulfilling. Not for me.

I suppose I've lived in the 21st century for too long.

Because where paper and pen don't seem to do the trick, a keyboard and a blank word document seem to fill that empty space in my writing soul quite agreeably. My fingers can move (almost) as fast as my mind tends to, and when I have thoughts that are irrelevant to my current stream, I can type 'em out and move 'em around until I find the space of thought they were supposed to be composed in in the first place.

It's like playing Tetris. Only with words.

So for a while, I did that here. I opened my veins (morbid? sorry...) and splashed words onto this tan and white blogger screen that doesn't ever seem to agree with my formatting. I don't think I ever did it daily, although that was (clearly) my goal (see blog title).

It's also clear that that goal failed. Miserably, I might add.


Here's why: I got scared. I got scared that I was uninteresting. I got scared that people wouldn't want to read what I had to say. I got scared that people would judge my writing abilities. Scared that I would never be good enough. For you, or for myself.

Silly, isn't it? It's just a blog.


Recently, though, I've created a word document. It sits on my desktop. It is saved as "paperclips." I visit that document frequently, if not daily, and I just type. I don't delete, I don't re-read, I don't edit, I just type.

And it is wonderful.

And the best part? My muse is back. My words are back. And I want to share them. Because I want to connect. I want to connect to humanity. I want to connect to YOU.

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all. -Richard Wright, American Hunger