I’ve been a closeted writer for a long time.
Throughout the last decade, I’ve secretly written in my journal multiple times a day. When my journal isn’t in reach, I try to catch as many of the words floating around my brain as I can and release them into the very disorganized note app of my phone.
You might say, “Well it’s only journal writing though, not REAL writing”. As if I haven’t said that to myself multiple times a day, every day. As if I haven’t said that to myself every time the unruly inspired part of myself taps me on the shoulder and whispers in my ear that I should share this stuff someday. That maybe, just maybe, I am a writer. How dare she be that bold.
Despite the internal battle and resistance I’ve had to sharing my writing for the better part of the last decade, I finally took my first writing class this spring. Throughout this writing class, it became (somewhat painfully) obvious that the writing voice I’ve developed only sounds like one part of myself.
I call it my yoga teacher voice. It’s the deep, introspective, care-taking-y part of myself. The one that plunges into the depths of the human experience, of pain, of healing, of yoga philosophy/ meditation /mindfulness/ Buddhism, reflections of nature, lessons I’ve learned from life, spirituality, etc.
It makes sense to me. I learned to write this way because I accidentally started my writing journey by journaling. And I started journaling when I physically couldn’t keep my thoughts and feelings from bubbling over and spilling out onto a Microsoft Word document one day during one of the many daily panic attacks I used to have. Journaling has been my outlet, how I come back to center, how I take care of myself and apply the tools I learned in years of therapy. This part of my writing voice also developed alongside my studies of yoga philosophy and many other spiritual traditions.
But, there is a part of me that I am missing in my writing, and it has been feeling off without her. I see glimpses of her sometimes as she’s been trying to come through. This is the part of me that most people who grew up with me know very well. The lighthearted, playful side of me that likes to joke around and create games out of everything.
I should’ve known that this part of me was missing in my writing a long time ago. When I wanted to start a blog in 2018, a close friend told me this while giving me feedback that my writing didn’t sound like me. What did I do when she told me? I ignored her, like the smart human I am, and just stopped sharing my writing instead.
Now that I’ve finally come to terms with this, how I do weave the lighthearted and playful side of my personality into my writing without getting rid of the other very real part of myself altogether? I guess I have to just do it, actually practice and write potentially cheesy & embarrassing things, while I stumble around in the dark trying to find a more authentic voice. Yikes.
A bit of background all to say: These next posts will be an experiment of finding my more playful writing voice through a project I’ve been wanting to put into the world for a long time.
I’ve been writing a series of very short stories. Particularly moments when I’ve experienced magic in my life. I am NOT writing fiction-magic, I’ll be writing non-fiction-magic. Drops of magic that are woven through our daily lives are as real as anything. Moments that feel like fiction, even though they are not.
Real Life Magic.
I know that everyone experiences these because the more I have the courage to share my own stories, the more other people share that they also have these experiences. Most (not all) people only share these kinds of stories with me when we are one-on-one though because we are all too scared to talk about this stuff in groups for fear of losing our credibility.
I deeply relate to this fear because I’ve been doing a great job of avoiding bringing Real Life Magic into the world over the last few years for the same reasons, even though it’s been demanding expression from me since 2018.
I am not sure how many of my own stories I will share, but my first one is scheduled to go out next week. I have plenty of other people’s stories stored in my brain and recorded in interviews too. We’ll see what happens with those.