Longest time, no see!!!

Welcome to another blog post!!!

I’m ashamed to admit that life got in the way for a while and this blog was put on the back burner. I really need to create some type of schedule to keep myself accountable and really get this blog running. I’m thinking either monthly or biweekly.

Any suggestions?

Anyway, let’s get on to the topic of this blog post: writing. There’s a love-hate relationship going on between me and writing, mostly depending on what I’m writing about. A lot of people seem to think that you must have a talent for writing to be good at it, but that’s simply not true. Anyone can write if you know how and all great writers needed help with their works. Almost nothing in life has been done solely by one person and that’s okay. It takes a horde of editors, copywriters, publishers, illustrators, ghostwriters, etc. to get books published, so don’t ever think it’s something you have to do yourself.

But I digress.

Let’s drive deeper into my relationship with writing.

The love, the likes, the glory

Writing has always been a coping skill for me. Whether it be songs or stories, writing has always been something that I turned to in my darkest moments and in my lightest experiences.

I’ve written a lot of mediums: songs, poetry, stories, chapters, essays, narratives, etc. Pretty much any type of writing you can think of, I’ve done it, whether intentional or not. Of course, I have my favorite mediums to write in just like an artist has their favorite paints to work with. My favorites include songs, poetry, and stories/chapters.

I’m combining the last two into one because they kind of work together when you think about it.

First, let’s talk about songs.

Songs

Believe it or not, I wrote my first song at 8 years old…and it technically wasn’t even my song. A friend (at the time) of mine wrote a song that wasn’t the best and since she knew I was good at writing, she asked me to rewrite it. I had never written a song before but since I had a blueprint and the thought that I could do much better, I took a shot at it.

The lyrics turned out much better than I expected for an 8-year-old and I got compliments from pretty much everyone that read the lyrics I wrote. Granted, we were all a bunch of 8–9-year-olds who didn’t know the next thing between Shakespeare or Edgar Allen Poe, but we knew when something sounded good.

Something about writing that song made me feel like I could fully express myself properly for the first time. It unlocked an obsession that persists to this day and is one of my go-to ways to express myself when I’m in a dark place or am filled with emotions so grand, I have to get them down on a sheet of paper.

Yes, I prefer to write my songs with pen and paper first, but I’ve recently adapted to typing on the computer or on my phone if there’s no paper or anything to write with around (or if it’s more convenient).

When I was highly depressed and thought about suicide, I wrote songs that expressed my thoughts and the trauma I was going through at the time. When I fell in love for the first time, I first thing I did was write a love song. When I was questioning my faith in God because I’m queer, I wrote about it to express my want to be a Christian but my fear that God hates me (I’ve since learnt that the Bible has been used for foolish hate and prejudice for centuries and that’s what he meant by using his name in vain but I once again digress).

Whatever I was going through, songs we there to help me. I love writing songs so much, I’ve thought about releasing an album at least once in my life for everyone to hear my lyrics. Of course, that’s an in-the-progress project, but I’ll keep everyone updated on the progress.

Here are some songs that are near and dear to my heart:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ORcUHD_O7jG96YWQkM_4Ax4JqqCRZyk3IaF7WP–Zus/edit?usp=sharing

I am choosing to trust you with these songs.

Stories/Chapters

All throughout elementary and middle school, I wrote stories for the prompts we would have in ELA/Reading class. And every time I wrote a story, my teacher would give me constructive criticism on my stories and give me a good grade. I believe I even had one teacher to say that she always looks forward to my stories because she knows it’s going to be good. But I’m not completely sure I remember that correctly.

One of my most favorite stories I’ve ever written was about this lady who was kind to the robots at her job, so she never had an issue with them. She was extremely clumsy though and one day, stumbled (quite literally) upon a robot plot to take over her job and then the world. I never finished the story beyond that general plot, but I’ve always thought about fully fleshing the story into a book or maybe even a series.

What do you think?

I’ve also written short stories revolving around my family and the craziness that happens on a daily basis. I once wrote a story about the time my grandma almost got us hit by a bus because my granddad or my brother said and I quote, “That bus was going to bulldoze us and we were going to bulldoze our way to heaven”.

I simply can’t make this shit up.

Moving onto chapters, I’m currently working on two novels that I hope to have either professionally or self-published one day. I’m leaning towards professional/traditional publishing, but that requires getting my name out there and actually having a company that wants to take a chance on me.

One of my novels is centered around a dark wizard who just might find a reason for living once he’s kicked out of his home. I have visited the book in forever, but I really want to get back to writing it because I have so many ideas for the book and I’m beyond excited for it.

My other novel is being written in journal style about a college girl’s way through life and romance. I haven’t fully fleshed out the idea for this story yet and truly just have a bunch of random chapters without a plot written. I need to sit myself down and come up with a genuine plot for that book. Otherwise, I’ll just keep writing chapters without a direction for the plot.

You’d think the journal style one would be easier to write, but I seem to be having more trouble with that one than I imagined.

It’ll all come together in the end. I know it will.

Poetry

Ah, yes, the last writing medium is finally here. If you couldn’t tell by my previous post about my poetry book, Manic Nights and Depression Days, I really love writing poetry. I’ve written two poetry books thus far and plan to write more once I get the inspiration.

I fully believe that poetry is a form of songwriting as a lot of the time, poetry is simply a song without a beat. It’s no wonder that my songwriting skills developed my poetry skills as I got older.

I remember writing one of my first poems in middle school during the beginning of my depression period. It was about insomnia and how hard it is for me to go to sleep and stay asleep. I showed it to my closest friends at the time, and they all had positive things to say about the poem.

Poetry became another way for me to cope with the stresses of life and with the war I was fighting in my head. I fell in love with reading poetry too; both modern day poets such as Amanda Lovelace, Halsey, and Atticus and classic poets like Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, and Edgar Allen Poe. For a good period of my life, I wrote poetry almost every day to feel better and truly express what was going on with me.

That’s actually how my first poetry book came to be, Thoughts (Problem, Trouble, Difficult). I had written so many poems and didn’t know what to do with them. Someone casually mentioned that I should publish the poems and the rest was pretty much history. I became obsessed with publishing the book before I graduated high school and accomplished that goal either the year before I graduated or the year of.

It’s something that’s special and close to my heart, even if I don’t let people know about my accomplishment or when I’ve published a book.

Perhaps, that’s why sales are low.

The bad, the ugly, the reality

Now that I’ve discussed the positive side of things, it’s time for me to get a bit truthful.

Writing is not easy for a lot of people. Even for some of the greatest writers of all time, writing did not come naturally to them and they struggled with the projects they tried to bring to life. I feel as though we as a society are so focused on already having the skill that we forget that literally anyone can learn the skill as well. We tend to have the mindset of, “Well, if I were meant to be good at this, I would be. Because I struggle so much, this is clearly not meant for me”.

And that’s wrong but I digress.

Writing something great takes a lot of time; time that most people don’t have. We live in a busy, ever-going world that almost forces us to make the most of every second. While writing can be a good pastime, most people simply don’t have the time to put their all into writing the next big thing.

Not to mention that writers don’t tend to bring in a lot of income either unless they happen to write a bestseller. There’s so much competition when it comes to writing and you really have to write something special to catch someone’s attention.

Whether you’re writing a book or an article, there has to be something special about the way you write in order for it to make that large income amount movies like to dramatize.

Another truth about writing is that reading books and poetry are slowly dying activities and arts. With the rise of technological advancements and the decline of attention spans, reading has become something that only a certain group of people do. Same thing with poetry. It’s become something niche that only a small group of people seem to enjoy. This means that it’s hard to market books and poetry and hope to make a grand income because people simply don’t want to read anymore. And they happen to want to read, they don’t want to read poetry because their minds immediately conjure up the Shakespeare we were forced to read and decode in school.

It’s a sad realization that certain aspects of life are dying out, but this is simply a sign of the times. Kids and teenagers would rather spend time playing with their friends or playing a video game than using their imagination and reading a good book. Adults, on the other hand, simply don’t have the time to sit down and read a book a lot of the time.

This reality makes me sad, but truly, what can you do when the general population seems to operate on what is popular and what the current trend is.

Anyway, that’s the post!!!

As previously mentioned, I’m going to try to come up with a schedule for writing blog posts and really get this show on the road.

Thanks for reading this post and I’ll see you in the next one!!!