What Compels Me to Write?
Wicked Wednesday Prompt #338
If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic. ~ Toni Morrison
I think I have always been a writer. My father once gave me an old box full of notebooks and loose paper from my childhood writings and I was amazed at the sheer volume of work a kid could produce. I remember begging him to bring home paper from the office, so I could write on the back. Or carbon paper! I love being able to play newspaper and make multiple copies of each piece I wrote. Ok, so it was USED carbon paper, so it was only one or two copies, but it still felt great to see my work, “in print!”
When I was 16, I wanted to be a journalist. But girls from very small towns and very religious backgrounds are not encouraged to be anything more than housewives and mothers or maybe, like in my case, a very special calling as a Pastor’s/Missionary’s wife. But in spite of this, the need to write has remained one of the primary constants throughout my life.
The sheer volume of journals hidden in boxes in my mother’s basement or on shelves in my best friend’s office speaks to the deep seated need I have to chronicle my life. My thoughts always seem to clarify themselves as I write. The words on the page shifting and sorting the words in my brain until things coalesce into some semblance of order. I was told once that I am an “Out Loud Processor.” If I have a need to talk through my thoughts, I have an even deeper need to get them out on paper and see them written on the screen.
I started blogging before blogging was even a thing and I have lost more content into the internet ether than most people output in a lifetime. Thank goodness for those early ‘blog to book’ companies! I was able to capture a lot of those posts from the early 2000’s and they are now safely stored in the aforementioned basement boxes, even though their homes on the web are long since forgotten. In the end I even ended up with a career as an Instructional Designer, which is primarily writing. My fingers fly across a keyboard 12–15 hours a day writing, both professional and personal, not counting surfing and Tweeting and WhatsApping!
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve sought the English language to help describe the word around me. I’ve attempted to make the over 40 countries I’ve traveled the past few years come alive over and over again with writings about the amazing people and places I’ve seen. Writing has helped me figure out relationships: with men, with my country, with my sexuality, with work, family, and religion. It has even helped me escape from reality as I ventured into fiction and erotica writing.
Now, closer to 50 than 16, I can’t stop writing. It’s a need that continues to grow stronger. I started writing my memoir a little over a year ago. Over 200 pages in and it feels like a long hard labor of love, but something I HAVE to do. I am compelled to write my story and hope that it will help other women travel their own path with more security and trust in themselves.
I also write here on Medium about relationships, Polyamory, and ethical non-monogamy. (Something else that writing has helped me to figure out more than once.) Over the past few years of traveling and rediscovering myself as a very sexual person, I also started writing about sex; specifically my own sexual experiences. This past few months, my desire to write these stories has increased and I’ve expanded into fictional accounts of erotica too.
It’s been so much fun! Writing dirty stories, writing about “non-traditional relationships,” and connecting to the sex writing community trough Twitter has been more fun than I ever expected. I have learned a lot too! There is a lot out there to explore and discover and writing is helping me to do that every day!
I don’t know why I have to write. But write I do. Write I will. It hasn’t failed me yet, so I will keep on going, until I am done. But that is not today!
You can find me and my writings here on Medium as well as the following: (Some of these blogs are no longer being updated* but, like I said, I have always been writing!)
Longitude and Lustitude- A 40something Divorcee, Travels, Tinders and Tells All. Erotic stories, mostly true, some fiction, all hot and bothered! www.lustitude.com
Digital Lala*- Stories of traveling around the world! www.digitallala.com
Fried, Scrambled and Fertilized* - Posts I wrote while I was dealing with infertility during my marriage. fsfafter40.wordpress.com
Dragonflies and Eagles* - Writings from the early days after I left my abusive alcoholic husband and started a new life in Costa Rica. https://dragonfliesandeagles.wordpress.com
