Something to Say

This is my 670th post. Maybe when I get to a thousand, I'll throw a party. Will I still have something to SAY at 1,000? My guess is yeah. Maybe. If I'm still breathing, I'll have something to say.

Because here's the thing . . . in the comments of yesterday's post, I wrote that I didn't really become a writer, in my mind, until I had something to say. Unlike some of you, who write because you have stories in your head, or because you love romance or spy novels, all great reasons to write, I think I went through some sort of process to where I had a life philosophy, and writing is just a part of it.

And I needed some living under my belt before I got to that point.

Before I arrived that that place, I can see now all my short stories were really just thinly veiled autobiography. It was cheap therapy. Loose-leaf sheets and a pen, not $120 an hour. I hopped on my own Couch.

After I was done, not that any of us are ever REALLY done, writing got much more fictional. The thinly veiled stuff got more elusive. I processed small bits of truth in there, not chunks of real life. I didn't need to mine my own life for story because my life philosophy made living no less hard, but certainly less internally rocky.

So what did I have to say, after all? I see, arced over multiple books, themes of betrayal and survival, of life as an utterly futile and ridiculous and painful and joyful journey in which you must--over and over and OVER again--discover what you are made of and pick yourself up and go on until you move from a place of pain to joy again and start the cycle all over. I see themes of people searching for meaning and wondering if there is a God . . . or if God is found in the strength of family. I see that good and evil constantly battle and that there is no white and black, only muted shades of gray and you struggle to find the truth. I see that the so-called bad guys often behave better than the so-called good ones because they often value what I do--loyalty. I see themes of God not caring WHO you love . . . just THAT you love. In my new YA trilogy, I see that sometimes you must take up the hero's responsibility and crown, not because you want to, but because you love people who need you.

When my work became less of a journal and more of a broader canvas of worldbuilding and characters making their way . . . I had something to say. THEN I really was a writer.

So . . . do you have something to say?