The Thankful Project: November 5th.

I only have two talents that I know of:  I can write and I’m crafty.  Everything else I have to work at, but being creative is my thing.

I’ve always loved writing.   Growing up I wrote poems and a lot of stories that began with the words, it was a dark and stormy night, which my mom always read out loud at the dinner table.  In college, it took me about two months to realize I should change my major from an education one to a writing one. When I made the switch, the chair of the English department e-mailed me and said. “Welcome home.”  I cried when I read that because it felt true.

Writing has always felt like home to me.  I love the outlet it provides, love the feeling of creating something new.  I love the feeling of waking up in the middle of the night with a thought that will spend the next few hours rolling around my brain, turning itself into a story.  I love stringing words together and making them somehow evoke emotion from the page.  There are few things that excite me more than having a cup of coffee, a pen, and a blank notebook.

I had to write a paper once describe why I wanted to be a writer.  It, like this post, was surprisingly hard to explain for someone who claims to love writing so much.  I just found that paper and I think the closing paragraph of it sums up how I feel:

“It’s like my soul is dancing.  When I write, I’m free.  Not tied down by anything else, just free.  Something clicks right into the place it was meant to, my soul starts dancing in some other place–with the characters and words I’ve created, maybe–and I experience moments of true joy, all because I am doing what I was created to do.  If nothing else ever comes of my writing, I will still write, because that feeling of freedom and and rightness and joy is enough for me.  It always will be.”