Time To Write Again

I used to write a lot.

It started with yellow and black journals, filled for writing practice in my two student home school.  However, I didn’t always enjoy writing there, where the latest grammatical concept or spelling word didn’t necessarily come easily.

But then there were the ‘side notebooks,’ created for pleasure during quiet time. Filled with pictures of stick figures and scribbles, history facts gathered from Liberty’s Kids, and ideas that could not be forgotten. My deepest, darkest secrets. The feelings that I didn’t necessarily want out, but which needed to find a place in. Writing was their way of doing that, my why of figuring, of learning when I didn’t know how.

Notebooks graduated to documents on a laptop when I was twelve and Mom trusted my typing skills. I was absolutely thrilled. Now it wouldn’t take so long to get my thoughts out, and maybe I’d actually finish something. You see, my childhood scrawling never really developed in the notebook and I was quite disappointed, since I was supposed to become an author as soon as possible.

Now when I look back, my memories are filled with words, in addition to the photographs and pictures that most people have. And sometimes, those words are what create the pictures and the videos inside my head. I am grateful for writing, and I love the words I have.

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I’ve been staring at documents–empty, full, partially filled–for the past three and a half months. Two papers, weeks of journals, a dozen show responses, half a million emails (and I’m not kidding!), four write-an-essay-exams, some devised and revised theatre, and one script analysis later, and I leave semester five with lots of written proof that I was there. It’s maybe more akin to the yellow and black journal I once held in grade school, yet it’s still writing. Writing still helps me in the same ways it always did, and through it, I am able to help.

But it’s time to really write again. Here. And in the notebooks and Word Documents, waiting to be filled. I like to think of schoolwork as just a practice for the real things yet to come.

It’s time to unload the stories, which have been stored up in this tired brain for the last three months. It’s time to reflect and process and remember. It’s time to write again.

It’s time to write again. I think it every morning when my “wake up reminder” rings for the tenth time, and I climb out of the covers reluctantly.

It’s time to write again, I say, crossing off one more thing from the ever growing list, and leaving an empty space for it.

It’s time to write again, I dream in rehearsal, in class, and while writing those papers.

But when I do, the words feel stiff. I press backspace much more than enter. I am tentative, shy, and utterly unsure. But why?

Was the child with her scrawling and facts and feelings? Was the young girl who could type for the first time?

Nope. If I remember correctly, there was very little hesitation, or none at best, in those writers’ hands. And that’s how the stories came to be, rough and awkward as they once were, but still they were there.

And with time, the words sweetened. But only with time spent making more words.

So it’s time to write again. For better or for worse.

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This post is in commemoration of my four year blog anniversary! That’s right–I first started writing in this corner of the internet on December 18th, 2010. I used to write a lot more back then, but I like to think of this as my writing space, nonetheless. This post is also my re-inaugeration back into the blogging and writing world, after my accidental hiatus over the last three and a half months. Expect to hear more from me over the coming weeks!