Suddenly, Finally — a Writer

Okay, Year in Review, I can do this.

2015 opened with me, Lisa — decidedly a non-writer, a wannabe writer, a writer in fantasy (I had imagined the readings and the outfits and the acceptance speeches, which is interesting when you consider that I hadn’t written much beyond grocery lists and the odd pissed off journal rant) — a new Medium denizen, cautiously pecking away and creating not much.

My year started with a fairly uninteresting, excessively short and tentative anti-resolution list —

(one that I’m actually trying to revive, because New Year. And attention).

Then, in the whole month of January, 2015, I published one thing on Medium — one tiny, lonely meditation on what-the-hell-could-possibly-not-go-wrong —

— and Human Parts accepted it — brilliant, lovely, supportive, sadly bygone Human Parts, and I felt a new buzzing possibility in the world that maybe this impulse I had to write was not misbegotten, ill-advised, or just plain stupid. Maybe I had something to say, too.

Gradually, a very interesting thing happened. I started writing. Constantly. I started thinking about writing and writing about writing. I learned to navigate this site (no small thing for mini Luddites like me), found publications, found fabulous writing, spoke with fabulous writers, became an EDITOR! Found fabulous editors. Had much general fun and brilliant literary times and am now, one year later, a different person.

It’s true.

I know, it sounds impossible. Dramatic, even (which wouldn’t be entirely out of character). But I really, truly am a different person. Oh sure, the foundation’s the same — I’m still me, I still say and do the same annoying things, I’m still annoyed by the same things, yoga still hurts and I still talk about drinking too much, but now I am a WRITER. I think I can actually say that confidently, standing squarely in my mountain pose and strong.

I AM A WRITER. (I think. Sometimes.)

I’ve written about how yoga hurts —

I’ve written too much about drinking —

(which is interesting, because I’m really not a heavy drinker. Really.)

Then, I wrote this piece about homeschooling that got so much attention, it blew my new writer’s brains into tiny pieces, even though you couldn’t get more nichey (and I can make up words like that now because, you know, I’m a writer)—

But it gave me the sly sense that I could do this thing, this writing thing, if I could just find my audience. I had written for home education mags before, but this was different. If felt more like mine, somehow. Trouble is, writing about education isn’t my favorite thing, it’s not my passion. I like writing and reading about education, for sure, but it’s not my jam, you know? (I hear it — my daughter already told me that’s hopelessly dorky, but whatever. So I’m a dork now, too.)

Personal essay is my jam (to continue in the vein of dorkiness). So I chased it, happily and incessantly. I wrote in my head, in the middle of the night, in the car, on walks, I grew in ways I couldn’t have imagined. And I realized that this is what all the writers I’ve ever idolized have done. They’ve written — on paper, in their brains, anywhere, everywhere. They’ve followed words and sentences to logical (or poetically illogical) conclusions and they’ve built small (or tediously large) treasures to give to anyone willing to indulge them.

It’s not magic. It’s the most satisfying, meditative, therapeutic, logical activity I’ve ever come across and I will likely never stop. And now, to find the audience.

Hello? Anyone?

My favorites this year —

I was featured in a podcast (yes! me! In a podcast! What’s a podcast?!). The Coffelicious suggested me to the Comatose Podcast as a — wait for it — FEATURED WRITER — and I, in all my magnitude, entertained the project. I sound like a total dork in the actual thing, completely devoid of personality, but — YEAH — I was in a podcast.