Finding My Voice Through Writing

06 November, 2015 - 3 min read

I used to dream of being a writer. At first, I would write in a notebook every day. You could have called it a diary of sorts. Maybe that’s what it was, but for me, it was how I was learning to tell my story. My attempt to find what made me unique.

Eventually, I graduated to writing stories involving D&D characters, taking the things that would happen in our games and trying to bring another depth to them. My dream was always to write stories, to create fiction, and this was one of my first attempts.

Then something happened, I became a web developer.

I didn’t necessarily stop having the dream of writing, but my effort and focus moved from channeling my creativity through one craft and into another. In writing software, I found a faster way to bring ideas to reality, one that provided an immediate source of good income. So my dream of being a writer stayed just a fond dream.

Eventually, I found my way into blogging (not too different from what I’m doing here), however, it wasn’t something I ever took seriously for its own sake. Instead, it was a companion for my other efforts, losing weight and getting fit. While I think many people might have used it as an opportunity to do both, I stayed focused on only one piece and eventually the writing stopped.

Over the last 2-years or so, one thing I’ve realized is that when I’m not writing, it creates a hole in my life. Not the dramatic woe is me sort of hole, but the kind where reality makes less sense to me.

Writing is in some ways a meditative exercise. One that allows me the time to really explore ideas, without reacting to them. It gives me the means to find the me in between all the things that happen all around.

However, one thing I’m learning about myself is that I don’t want this space to be a blog like I’ve done before. While I need that medium to figure things out, I’m starting to miss the original pen and paper approach. Where I can say anything and not feel afraid of judgment.

So one thing I want to note is that I don’t plan to go as fully personal with this blog. I want to use this as a place to develop my writing style, specifically around my abilities with storytelling. Not to say this blog will be full of fiction, but I want to learn to hone the art of storytelling through life itself.

For all the other stuff, I’ll keep that to myself. Not to say no one wants to see it, I’m sure someone will, but it just doesn’t match what I want to do with the next chapter for my life. For that next chapter, I want to see what it might look like to be a writer. Maybe not professionally, but I’d love to at least earn the moniker.

What type of stories would you like me to tell?