On Being Bold And True: Week Three

This post is the third in a series of Monday posts On Being Bold and True. My first "Bold and True" post is here. On Mondays I will post something I feel passionately about, something I am proud of accomplishing, or something that is intensely personal that I might not otherwise write about. I am choosing to write about things that make me who I am, which is to say that what I write here may not match another person's experience or opinion.

This week's topic is something that I haven't written about nearly as much as I expected to when I started this blog. Early on, I created a category for the topic and it contains only twelve posts, which I didn't realize until now when I checked.

The topic: writing.

I have shared bits and pieces about how I feel about writing in those twelve posts. I have considered sharing further thoughts but, for reasons that are hard to explain, I keep putting it off. This "On Being Bold and True" series seemed a good place to dive in.

Writing has always been an important part of my life.

I started keeping a diary at a young age and continued until I was in high school. When I was sixteen I read Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, where detectives searched the daughter's diaries for clues to the cause of the murders. I gathered up my diaries and burned all of them in a trash can in the back yard. That was a lot of years ago and I don't remember what I was so worried others might read, but I remember feeling like I had no choice but to destroy my personal writings.

I started journaling again when I went away to college and have had a sporadic record over the last 37 years. I have thought about destroying those journals as well, but I haven't for reasons which aren't clear, just a nagging thought that I should hang onto them.

I have never thought about being a fiction writer. I write about my personal experiences. I write about what I think and what I learn, and it's the way I process what I think about what I learn.

That's either why I love school or why school loves me. In 1998 when I wanted to go to graduate school I chose Goddard College, where writing is a major element of the curriculum. The person who was my second reader, a teacher/researcher/writer, said in my introduction to a group of people that my thesis was the best example of using research to inform practice that he had seen in his fifteen years of teaching. That was the greatest compliment he could have given me; I credit all the writing I did with my success. When my advisor asked me what I thought of my work, I replied honestly that when I went back and read the entire work I had a hard time believing that I had written it.

When I am engrossed in what I am writing, I lose myself. Ideas come to me, my mind makes connections, and I understand things in ways that make sense only when I'm writing. I process while I'm writing, and I gain further understanding while I revise and edit.

So what's the problem?

I get lost in my writing. That's not a problem when I have a reason and a deadline for what I'm writing. It feels like a problem if there isn't a specific reason to write or a reward at some point.

One reward for writing on this blog is the connection I've made with other women, and many of my online friends are writers. I appreciate good writing.

Another reward is a written record of this life journey I am on and how I have changed over time. It's helpful to look back over where I've been when I think about where I'm going.

My husband and my daughter have told me I should write a book. I wonder what I could say that others haven't said. There are so many people writing books. What do I have to add?

For Christmas my daughter surprised me with a book of my blog posts from 2008 and 2009.* I was speechless. As I read through the pages I wonder where the words came from. The words came from the writing, the process I go through when I'm writing. The writing changes me; through writing I can change my thinking, answer a question, or solve a problem.

It's time to move past any concerns I may have and see where my writing takes me.

It seems like a good idea to do more writing as my journey continues. I have mentioned before that I wanted to write more here. Then I wonder how much is too much.

So I'm going to play with that a bit and see what happens. As you can see from this post I'm working some things out. I would be interested in any insights you might have ~

*My daughter used SharedBook and was able to surprise me because she has my password. I am going to ask her to help me do the same with my posts from 2010.