It’s amazing how much of a difference it can make in your life when you ignore your passion, and don’t make time for it.

For as long as I can remember, writing has been more than just a past-time for me; it has been the fire that has driven me forward, the tool with which I kept my sanity, and the thing which brought me more joy than any other material thing.

It burns within my soul. It is a part of me. I am not me without the writing. Yet, for the longest while, I haven’t been writing. I suppose I initially started to lose my flare for it when I was struggling with the magazines… but after coming out to Teen Ranch, and finding myself more often than not either attempting to be social, or glued to the tv, I have not been writing. And slowly, every day that I didn’t write, a part of me fizzled out. It’s like lighting a bunch of Tiki torches that all have different amounts of fuel, then forgetting to refill them. Eventually they all burn out.

Not too long ago I found a journal entry I had written when I was much younger (the fifth or sixth grade I believe), about how I was able to relate with Emily of New Moon. In the first book, she explains her bits of writing coming to her with ‘the flash’, a moment of, dare I say it, divine inspiration, where to ignore it would literally kill her. What caused me to relate to her the most, was that was the way I operated.

Recently, I read a book in which an author explained that if writer’s wait for the flash to hit them to write, they’re not really doing the work – that flashes come too far and few between for a writer to rely on them. Well, while that might be true for that particular writer, it was not ever true to me. My flashes incurred so close together, that I often had to forego the urge set by some because I could not write out the ideas fast enough. I used to have them so frequently in fact, that no matter where I was, I was always jotting down ideas and scenes, and poetry, and characters and conversations. I can’t count the amount of times I got busted at the factory for scrawling a story on a piece of cardboard rather than paying attention to my machine.
I used to journal most nights – though my goal was always to journal every night, admittedly that can be difficult when you have a busy schedule. But I did journal most nights. Some nights it was just about what I did that day, others it was a frantic outpouring of my feelings, and sometimes it turned into a brilliant flow of thoughts that not only sounded beautiful, but shed some sort of light and wisdom on my current place in life.

But that was before the Ranch. That’s not saying the Ranch is a bad place, or that it destroyed me. Quite the opposite, really. The Ranch saved my life. Not in the sense that it would have ended had I not come here, but it did restore my belief that happiness is achievable, as well as it brought me back to a point where I could serve God without being pulled in by the things of the world. It presented me with friends when I had none, with a second family, and with a place that I could call home (not that home wasn’t home, but its more… my own… it’s a place that I could do with what I liked, that I could set the stipulations of my surroundings.)
But unfortunately, as they always say, sometimes getting what you want comes with its consequences. Those consequences were an unending feeling that I NEEDED to always be social… it took away in a sense my ability not only to hide away, but to find a place where I could lock myself down and just write. Which that in itself is somewhat ironic, given that I live in a place so beautiful that inspiration should be hiding in every corner, behind every tree, and inside every crevice.

Having recently discovered all this and begun to delve back into the habit of writing is how I came to realize just how much damage this lack of writing was doing to me. I feel on fire again. I love it. Although I love my sleep, I love having nights like tonight, where my mind is so on fire to write that I cannot go to sleep; that I just have to get up and start typing away at the keyboard because my mind has locked into writer mode.
It’s sad that in the last week I have done more on the second draft of my novel than I have in the whole three years that the novel has been complete, but it gives me hope that it means I will actually get somewhere on it.

I intend to complete a novel for NANOWRIMO this year as well. I want to get a story idea, and a story plan so incredible that it will be as close to foolproof as one can get with a challenge such as nano.

The number one reason however, to get back into writing, beyond how it makes me feel, and what it does for me, is that this is the burning gift God has blessed me with. He saw fit to give me the talent to write, and by not doing so I’ve been denying one part of His plan for my life. I still don’t know where He plans to take me with it. All I know is that if God hadn’t intended me to use my writing for Him, for His purpose, or to have it play some sort of major role in my life, then I do not believe He would have placed such a strong and burning desire to write in my heart.

With that being said… I think I’m ready to go to bed. No rhyme intended.