Friday, April 1, 2011

A ~ A New Beginning

Let's re-boot.

Hello my friends, fellow bloggers, family members who don't know WHAT a blog is but are curious, and other wonderful writers I've met across the blogosphere in the last year. It's been a... different year than what I'd planned. That's pretty much the understatement of my life. And as a girl who learned at the feet of her amazingly talented story-telling Aunt Risky, I will be sharing tales of that, as well as what I predict will be an unpredictable stream of random posts. I'm taking the A-Z challenge with the wonderful folks over at Tossing It Out.

This challenge comes at a very good time in my life. I've been at a cross-roads of playing around with writing and writing for real and swimming in the big kids pool. I will admit I've gotten quite intimidated by the immense talent out there. But I've also learned a lot from those writers. I'll be writing about that journey, too.

It's rather a relief to have this post where I can just say all that's been on my mind for the last little while. I'd gotten to the point where I was part-way through a writing challenge and ran out of time. After that, I didn't really feel like I “should” write anything else until I finished that story. So there I sat, paralyzed. Haven't posted at even a 1/10 of my previous pace. Been paranoid about losing readers. And followers. Which led me to take a good look again at WHY I started this blog.

My tag line (as above) is: Wanna be writer seeks place to vent, practice, and share. I did that quite comfortably for a while. But the more I wrote, the more positive feedback I got, the more hesitant I became. I think it's the classic perfectionist sneaking out: wow, they think I'm OK. Better not do anything NOT OK. Sigh.

So on this first day of the challenge, I (in front of God and cyberspace) pledge to write all 26 posts in April, come hell or high water or all you get is my grocery list. I will write. Because I love to write. I want to write. And I lost that in seeking approval. But I'm back. Criticize at will.

10 comments:

Arlee Bird said...

Okay, you've made a pledge. And I know you'll do it. Have a great time with the Challenge.

Contrary to my usual practice of subscribing to comments, to save time during challenge I will not be doing so during April. If you want to respond to my comment , please email me directly from your email notification for the comment.
Thanks.

Lee
Tossing It Out
Twitter hashtag: #atozchallenge

Unknown said...

I've missed you...the "10th Daughter" site was confusing to me. Good to see you back!

Brian Miller said...

welcome back.

look forward to seeing you around kiddo...smiles.

jan said...

I think we all wrestle with an inner critic. Two books that helped me alot were The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron and If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland. This was a great post...we can all identify with you. Keep up the good work!

Janet said...

This is my first time coming over to your blog and I'm glad I did. Looking forward to reading what you write about...even if it is just your grocery list (you can learn a lot from those) :-)

baygirl32 said...

day 2 of the challenge and its great fun!


stopping by from the a to z
http://baygirl32.blogspot.com

Gail M Baugniet - Author said...

Welcome back, glad you made it to the Challenge!

http://gail-baugniet.blogspot.com

Unknown said...

Great start, looking forward to seeing what you got for B. Couldn't resist being number 100, I think it is lucky :)

Candyland said...

There you go! Say it out loud and it's real. You can do it:)

H said...

I'm sure that your grocery list will be dead interesting!

Welcome back!!