On Writing

*Disclaimer: personal post alert!*

A little less than two years ago, I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, for the unfamiliar among you) and churned out about 27,000 words of a novel, a feat of which I am still extremely proud. At some point during the writing process, however, I lost confidence and became bogged down in questions about why I was writing at all.

I liked the novel, I really did, but it somehow felt like it wasn't coming from me. I was writing something I thought people would want to read, but I wasn't writing something only I could create. And I came to realise that this fear of uniqueness, of authenticity extended far beyond my writing; it was pervading every aspect of my life.

So I stopped writing, and I put that particular passion of mine in a box and stashed it away where it couldn't bother me, and I got on with other things.

But writing didn't seem to want to leave me alone. I thought about it secretly. I noticed it constantly. I seethed with envy whenever a friend or acquaintance came out as a writer on social media (which happened surprisingly often). And in the end I just had to give in!

So this is me declaring that I'm writing again! I don't know what, and I don't know where it will take me. But that's part of the fun isn't it!? Who's with me?

p.s. Sorry Stephen King, I stole your title.