Monday, Monday Motivation...

 Writing is a process. We all know it by now. But what motivates writers?

Personally, I feel I have always had a better voice in my writing. Even at a young age. Now, what I'm about to tell you is not to gain sympathy, it's just what happened in my life that made writing a more effective communication for me.

When I was a kid, my parents got divorced. Up until that  moment, I was a chatter box. (I still can be, ask anyone!) But after the divorce, I stopped speaking for awhile. I think I felt like my talking too much drove them apart. You know how kids will always blame themselves for certain things. Who knows. But not communicating verbally became a thing. I didn't always speak my mind because I felt that either no one would listen or someone would get mad.

It wasn't until I was in therapy that I learned HOW to communicate verbally by writing down what I wanted to say. In moments of anger or stress, I shut down. My brain couldn't come up with the right words and I would say the wrong thing, get more frustrated and give up, going into deep silence. However, by writing it down and reading off what I wrote, I was able to convey my thoughts and feelings more accurately.

I'm not much of a journaling kind of person, but I did begin writing in a journal a little bit. It wasn't until I began playing a text based online role playing game that I got really good at writing. I've talked about that game before, and how you had to create a story for your character if you were going to be gone for a long period of time. You also got to post up any role playing you did with other people. Most people would just copy and paste the log, but a lot of us would write out the whole thing and add to the stories of the other characters.

By that time, I was hooked into writing because I felt it was the best way to convey everything in my mind and communicate with the written word, rather than verbal. I had tried writing a story prior to playing this game, but it didn't come out much like I wanted, but it was definitely a first time effort. It was good enough to keep me going. That's when I went onto Write.com and opened up an account and began to share my stories there and learning how to take the criticism and the praise. That thickened up my skin quite a bit.

So writing is definitely a way to express ourselves as writers and to motivate us. A way to convey our feelings, our ideas. The written word can be very powerful, especially when you have a delete button to edit your conversations.

Have a great rest of your week! Leave me a comment!