The writer I become........

Dorothy McCall said, "One cannot have wisdom without living life." McCall seems to have summed up this writer's writing life. In order to write what I know I must understand the circumstances that make up my life. In order to put my reflection into words I must have willingness to learn the lessons each moment of my life provides.

As a writer I must be willing to participate in my own life to the fullest. I must give each person in my life my full participation and my full attendance as well. It is only through suiting up and showing up willingly in my life I am able to do so in other people’s lives. It is in participating fully and attending fully when requested and even when not requested in another person's life I find any clarity as to what my purpose in life really is. I must immerse myself in the moments I share with people, but balance those moments with quiet alone time to reflect on the meaning and the purpose of those experiences. I must always reflect on how I felt during the experience and after.

My writing life is all about my attitude just like in my other lives. Happiness, wisdom, understanding, acceptance, tolerance all hinge upon my attitude. My writing life is easier as are my other lives when my attitude is to help not to take. In my writing if I write with purpose then I am giving not taking; in that simple sentence lays the wisdom of knowing why I just started writing daily this year. I never had a purpose before other than fame, fortune and notoriety. Superficial purposes like those are not sustainable, but last year a sustainable purpose entered my life. Life became simple, I began to hear my inner voice, I stopped being afraid to feel, to experience and to share. I became able to write.

I found wisdom through reflection. I stopped being afraid. As I reflect on my life not a single second has been wasted, not a single minute lost. Always there was the willingness to live, to experience, to learn. Always there was the patience for the right moment to come when I would find the wisdom to tell the truth of why I didn't write.

Today I reflect on my patience to just keep living, putting one foot in front of the other, until the wisdom came. All that is left is to reap the benefits as I continue to write. The benefits have changed though; they are no longer fame, fortune and notoriety, The rewards are looking at myself in the mirror eye to eye, looking at others with my head up comfortable in my own skin and not caring what anyone thinks about me or what I write when I click publish.

My true authentic self is the writer person I am no longer ashamed to be. I am becoming the writer who receives enough rejection letters to wallpaper a room; a writer who can put her feelings into a character and bringing them to life. A writer who can sit at the laptop shaking so deep within she believes her anxieties are causing a nervous breakdown. John Steinbeck wrote of himself, "I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straightening shyness that assails one." The terrors didn't stop Steinbeck or a thousand other writers like him.

Terror only stops non-writers. I am no longer a non-writer. Non-writers become paralyzed with fear, they crawl back into bed after being up for a while, they drink, they smoke, they take prescription drugs. They do whatever they can not to feel the terror. They are non-writers because they are unwilling to feel. If we don’t feel then we can't live life. We can go through the actions of doing what life has in store, but living is feeling connected, identifying with other people’s emotions. Living is being free to be yourself, to write yourself as you live your life. Writers don't care what other's think!! Non-writers do care!!

Margaret Atwood wrote, “Blank pages inspire me with terror.” Each day I wake up I have to make a decision. Am I going to be a writer or a non-writer today? Am I going to crawl back in bed or go lie on the couch and sleep away my creative hours? Am I going to be so selfish I block myself off from the feelings of those who love me? Am I going to be an Atwood, a White or a Steinbeck and identify with their feelings? Or am I going to compare and wallow in my fear of having nothing to say, nothing to offer, no discipline, no confidence because I am clinging to what I know.

I know how to be afraid and how not to write. I’m learning how to get my fear to work with me and for me instead of against me. The more I write the farther away I am from being a non-writer. The more I feel the farther away I am from being a non-writer. The more I laugh, the more I live, the more I experience the farther away I am from being a non-writer. The more I write the more of a writer I become…..