Blog Posts from the Soul

A few weeks ago I headed down to our school computer lab to pick up something I had sent to the printer. As is generally the case, there was a sizable stack of unclaimed copies sitting on top. After grabbing my document I flipped through the others to make sure none were mine. Amongst the usual lesson plans and reading logs I found a piece of paper that read:

Haikus from the Soul

Framing a photo of an unnerving robotic alien threatening to attack with razor sharp teeth and claws were two poems.

Alien you're weird
Don't cross the street when he's there
Watch out citizens


Weirdos are freaks
The weirdos come out at night
Do not talk to them

Haikus from the Soul? I didn't know whether to be tickled or concerned. Either way, I couldn't resist. I had to have it so I grabbed the copy and ran. This kid may grow up to be the next Ray Bradbury and I'll have an original copy of one of his earliest works.

Writing is a curious thing. Most people never attempt to write, or at least refuse to share any of their writing, for fear of rejection or ridicule. This most likely came from their experiences in school when every piece they turned in was given back full of red marks and corrections. It's amazing what you can come to believe about yourself when all you ever hear are reminders of what you've done wrong rather than what you've done right.

A few years ago I had the fortune to spend three weeks of my summer participating in the Midlands Writing Project's Summer Writing Institute. For seven hours each day a group of twenty teachers came together to read, talk, think, and write.We wrote poems and advertisements and memories and instructional books and letters and fiction stories and much more. Some of it was pretty good but the vast majority of it was terrible. That was lesson #1...not everything we write needs to be perfect, or even good. We write to write. Along the way an idea or a line or even a single word sticks with us and maybe becomes something of value. Something worth exploring.

At the end of fifteen days together we gathered in a circle to share one of our pieces. Everyone was very nervous about exposing their writing selves in front of the others. No matter how often our teacher had told us we were writers none of us truly believed her. We suspected it in others but certainly not within ourselves. Still, we each took a piece we felt represented our best work and shared it with the class. I suspected we just might prove her wrong.

I quickly volunteered to go first. I've learned this is the easiest path. No one had anything to compare my writing to and since everyone was so nervous about their own pieces they were more than willing to be complimentary of mine in hopes of creating good karma.

I sat in the "author chair" and shared my piece about visiting the beach and losing one of the kids. Even though it was a piece of fiction I started to cry a bit as I read, becoming consumed by the emotion of the story. I looked up and others were crying too. Not because they were laughing, but because they were sad. I realized that, with my written words, I had made that happen. I had made them feel something. My confidence grew just a tad bit.

A few months later I met a new friend, Tim, who convinced me to try keeping a blog. Writing on a blog is less risky than reading your pieces to others. When it's bad you never have to cringe after seeing the reader's reaction. Over the past twenty-two months I've written some stinkers. That's inevitable, though. If you write often you'll get to experience a little, or maybe even a lot, of everything. I think the easiest pieces to write are touching ones because the mere fact that you would share a piece of your soul makes others prone to forgiving awkward sentences. Trying to be funny, on the other hand, is very hard. There's no emotion attached so when you fail it just sits there like the elephant in the room that NO ONE is ignoring. I don't shy away from it though. I tend to go for more quantity than quality. A lot of my humor may miss the mark but if I do it often enough I'm bound to hit the mark a time or two.

I set a goal for myself when I started writing on the blog to publish a piece each week. Many weeks have been easy while a few others have been quite a challenge. A challenge to decide on a topic. A challenge to communicate my thoughts clearly. A challenge to remember what the piece was even supposed to be about.

I didn't want to write "updates" like you might see on social networking sites, but essays with a few memoirs and other genres mixed in. Having a small handful of readers who check in from time to time has helped keep me honest on my piece-a-week deadline. Because Tim has been so dutiful to comment on nearly every piece I've ever written I find that he's generally the audience I keep in mind when writing. However, there are other pieces - say, about Ty - where I think about how I want it to sound in his head as he reads it when he gets older. That's one of the cool things about writing- it lasts forever.

This is my 100th post. I've been looking forward to it for months. Over that time I had all kinds of ideas of things I might write about. I knew I wanted the topic to be writing but how I was going to share that was the real challenge. I've had many great ideas but, as happens all to often, I forgot most of them. I have two small notebooks for keeping notes but too often I forget them in my bag or in a bedside drawer. Perhaps by my 200th post I'll have mastered the habit of always carrying a notebook.

Carrying a small notebook, I hear that's what writers do.