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.