A New World of Exposure

I've been writing for much of my life. Sometimes I've chosen to share my writing, but often I haven't. I think I always hoped that I could skip a public phase of bad writing, and somehow be published later in life by literary presses describing me and my unforeseen wild success as a found diamond.

I recently decided that it was time to start the writing seriously part, and maybe, in some fledgling way, sharing it. It would be an experiment, a process, a way of finding out what might happen if I acted like a real writer.

Last night I joined hubpages and wrote my first "hub". It was an article I'd had inside me for a long time. A "how to" guide I wished had existed and been easy to locate when I was confronted with one of the most difficult experiences I've ever been through - an early miscarriage. Here is my article.

The timing of this article also coincided with a very recent inspiration to write a piece of creative non-fiction about the experience. I had kept writings from those weeks of grief and confusion for the sole purpose of referring to them later, hoping to make something beautiful out of something awful.

Last week I read an essay that blew my mind wide open about the possibilities for my own writing on this subject: Eve Joseph's Intimate Strangers. The essay describes the author's first hand experiences with death and dying as a hospice worker. In one paragraph she describes how metaphor is the language of the dying. This immediately caused a light of recognition to go off in the right side of my brain as I realized that symbol is the language of those who have survived a miscarriage. The essay I write will further explain what I mean.

This blog is intended to explore my writing process, but also is about how something we are passionate about can, in some way, save our lives. Writing for my life refers to my attempt to keep apace with myself through writing, but also explores how important activities that branch off from the act of writing - publishing, attempting to pursue monetary benefits from writing, etc. - can sustain writers in other ways as well.