Assigned Blog Post #7

I view writing as a pretty spontaneous process. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I don’t plan my stories out in advance—I only write when I feel inspired or when I feel a strong emotion. My metaphor is that it’s like pregnancy and giving birth.

Yeah, I know, it sounds weird but allow me to explain: it’s like pregnancy in that in the beginning you have all these ideals of what its going to be like—you have an image of the “perfect child”, you think you know what your “ideal family” will look like. Except the parallel with a story is that you get this gush of enthusiasm and you think, “my story will change someone’s day for the better”or “my story will change someone’s views about a particular subject”—but the reality (to be discovered a long time later) may be different from these wild dreams (same with pregnancy). And then comes 9 hard months when the mother has to deal with morning sickness, back pain, and all sorts of struggles—this is like the writer sticking to writing the story, even when he/she bumps into writers block, even when he/she loses hope in their story. These hard months all lead up to the big thing—birth/publishing your story. This is when your efforts truly come into fruition, and you see whether or not your results have been worth it (hopefully they have).

This was what my writing journey was like—at first it was a gust of emotion that spurred me to start typing away at my keyboard. Then I sort of neglected my story for a bit because it wasn’t really going anywhere, but then I decided to pick it back up and struggle through it and keep at it until I was finished and satisfied with the story. Then I unveiled it during workshop and everyone else got to read my story, and I received feedback that let me know whether or not my original goals were accomplished through my story.