A good portion of the time, it can suck to write.
Sometimes I wince at the things I have to remember just to convey a message to people. I have to close my eyes, turn on that challenging part of my brain, and dig into my past for old emotions that I have basically put on the shelf to collect dust. Emotions that I don’t particularly want to look at every day, but are always in the midst of my mind, only accessible when I choose them.
We, as writers, go to these places because we want you to see some form of truth through our eyes. We are hoping to knock down the doors of the soul and Windex the windows of the mind to set people free.
Most, if not all writers, have to go these places inside their mind. It’s part of the process of being a writer. What might feel so wholesome to read from the outside usually exists pain and suffering between the lines, commas and exclamations.
It hurts to go back to those inner snapshots in time—snapshots when you let parent or friend down; when a situation started with brightness but ended with soul-crushing reality; when you thought you were exactly where you were supposed to be, only to reminisce about a guy or gal that used to be in your life who is no longer an easy text away like they used to be.
I’ve often heard it said that when writers share their thoughts, they are handing the reader a piece of themselves.
And maybe that will help you, maybe it won’t. That’s entirely up to you. Nonetheless, the strength to let go of our pain is a juxtaposed paradox for us. We have to continually revisit it to understand things from different points of view.
I am not personally looking for sympathy, I just want you to take a moment to consider that behind all that “flowery language” or those “nice words” are sometimes uncovered, lost cities of raw emotion, pain, triumph and conflict. When a writer releases their thoughts to the world, something changes. They are releasing it so that you can make it your own.
Our words are not only ours anymore, but yours.
A vast majority of writers approach writing in an (obviously) internal and therapeutic kind of way. Some of us write for fun, some write as advocates for someone or something, some even write in song. But a common trait of all the content and pieces that we create often come from pivotal moments in our lives. Sometimes the only way for us to deal with those fleeting times is to put it on paper and read and think about what happened.
Is it super cheesy and cliché to explain it like this? Only you can answer that. But we have to go to back to the times when we weren’t our best selves. When we weren’t as perfect as we wanted to be. We have to time-travel, and discover what helped us or hurt us. Then, we shift back to the present and share what we found.
Featured Image Credit: Andrea Vehige