Nearly three years ago, I wrote a post commemorating blog post 100. I guess that means I'm averaging a little over 100 posts annually. When I first started blogging, I set specific goals for myself regarding how many posts I would write weekly. That was largely motivated by self-discipline. I worried that without setting goals, I would get discouraged and just stop writing.
I haven't always been a writer. Or maybe I've always been a writer, I just didn't know it. I enjoyed writing back in high school, especially angst-y adolescent poems, letters to far away friends and notes to nearby ones. I learned how to write well in college. I had one professor who circled every passive verb in every paper I ever wrote. To say that she wanted us to learn to write in a more active voice is an understatement. I once wrote an entire paper where I only used "is" one time. Try it. It's not easy.
After college, I mainly saw writing as a tool. I found I could write in a way the business world liked. I learned to simplify my style and get right to the point. This came fairly easily after the training I'd had in college. I combined my business writing skills with presenting. I have never (and will never) consider myself a salesperson, but I certainly have the ability to explain a service to you in a way you can understand. The years rolled by. I had one, then two, then three daughters. I worked full-time. I stayed at home full-time. I worked part-time. I started homeschooling.
I wrote the occasional item when asked - for a newsletter, as an introduction to a church cookbook, things like that. A friend encouraged me to write more. I can remember her telling me that she always liked anything I wrote. She knew I was a writer before I did.
I still don't know whether I'd consider myself a Writer. I don't get paid to put words down. The words I write aren't read by a lot of people. I don't write every day. I don't write fiction - or poetry - or consistently. But I'm a writer anyway. It helps me think. It helps me remember. Writing for me is a little like when Jacob set up the stones at Bethel after wrestling with God. When I write it down, I am saying, "I was here. God was here. This is what happened." That way, I can look back at those stones with my writing on them and remember where I have been. And see how far I have come.
3 comments:
Happy 501 Word Girl!
We can't begin to define an artist or a writer as someone who gets paid for it! Of course you're a writer. Here's how you know-could you quit even if you wanted to? Nope, that writer brain would keep composing, even if only in your head. 501, wow!
I challenge you to continue to open yourself up to see all that God has fashioned in you and for you from the beginning. Without a doubt, you are Word Girl in every sense of the logos and Logos. Blessings!
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