Okay, so somehow I let myself go two months without writing a blog post. I keep trying to make excuses as to why I haven’t done them: working full time, a lot on my plate, not enough time to really sit down and write. But, if I’m being honest, it’s because the mere thought of sitting down to write has been a huge source of anxiety lately. Part of it is because I’ve had no real inspiration and part of it is because there’s this pressure to produce something worth reading every time I sit down.

While I was in school, writing was my creative outlet. It was something I did when I really just need to give my left brain a break and my right brain was screaming out for some attention. Now that I’m out of school, writing has actually become work. While I still do it for fun, it has become much more apparent to me that this is the career path I have chosen and if I want to be successful, I’ll have to put a lot of hard work into it. No more writing when inspiration strikes. I have to write even when inspiration isn’t there. It means getting up early and staying up late. It means basically having a part-time job on top of my full-time job. And I’m not sure I was really prepared for that reality.

Over these past two months, I’ve asked myself countless times: Why do I write? And the answer wasn’t always clear, but here’s what I came up with.

1.) I write because it’s how I process things. This mostly happens when I’m journaling. Things just make more sense when I’m writing them out. And the world seems a much less scary place when I can put all the jumbled words in my head onto a piece of paper. My anxiety ebbs and I feel like a whole person. My words take on truth and make more sense when they are physically written down.

2.) I write because I’ve always done it. There are a few times in my adolescence that I remember realizing I just really loved writing. I was always creating stories based on my family and friends that I kept hidden in notebooks under my bed. I loved when a project in school required us to write a creative story because I knew I would flourish. I never questioned why writing was something I loved to do. It’s just always been.

3.) I write because it’s the one thing I’m most passionate about (next to baseball). When I was a freshman in college, I changed my major from Cinematic Arts to English with a concentration in Writing after one semester. I realized that what I loved most about Cinematic Arts was not the actual filming or production, but the storytelling. Once I realized that it was the thing I was most passionate about and that I could actually turn it into a career, I didn’t hesitate to change my major. Nothing I have ever done in my entire life has felt as natural as it did to change my major. Once I started taking classes, I was even more hooked than I could have ever imagined! I hoping that passion is what will help me build my career even when things don’t seem so promising.

4.) I write because I’m pretty sure it’s my calling. There’s nothing I’m more passionate about than writing and it’s the only natural career path I can see myself venturing on, so why not declare it my calling?

Writing has never been as hard as it is right now. I feel like I’ve fallen into the biggest bout of writer’s block that has ever happened to any writer, but I really want to push through it. Soooooo….I’ve decided to participate in the National Novel Writing Month. Long story short, pray for me as I try to write a full novel of 50,000 words in 30 days. Wish my luck and send me encouragement from time to time if you so wish! And hound me to make sure I’m writing every day, because clearly I suck at this.