I find it interesting when one thing directly correlates to another. In this case, reading and writing. They have always been linked together (think: reading, writing and arithmetic) and I’ve read countless articles about how your reading affects your writing and vice versa. However, it wasn’t until this past week that I truly saw the connection.
I have always written. Whether it was the beginnings of little stories when I was small, or poems in my teens, or journals, or research papers…I enjoyed it. I have always wanted to sit on my (currently fictional) back porch, overlooking the sand and sea, and write. I believe it was Nicholas Sparks who first gave me this image of a career, with his books set in North Carolina.
It took me a great deal of time and contemplation (as well as procrastination) to start researching and then putting in the legwork (very slowly) just to start this blog. The real reason for beginning this blog was to give myself an online presence – with hope that companies will see my writing and request I write for them. That hasn’t happened yet. As of now, I am not pushing forward to make any money. I’m still trying to figure this whole thing out, while simultaneously working my day job and doing all those other things that make up life.
For the past few months, I have noticed my journal writing becoming less and less of thought-provoking ideas, and more and more of just reporting facts of my daily life: “Today I ate this. I said this. I saw this. I did this. I hated this. I wished that.” Along with this nearly bullet-point journaling, I couldn’t quiet my mind to sit down and read. Oh, I could scroll through Facebook or Instagram for hours and read little articles here and there. But read a book? I’d read the same paragraph four times and move on to something less involved (like snuggling with a pup).
When I encountered this issue last year (nearly the same of time of year, come to think of it), I sought out a list of books that would make me laugh. I thought that would get me back into reading, and it had worked. Two of the books I didn’t ever get to on that list were Amy Poehler’s Yes Please and Tina Fey’s Bossypants. So last week, I went to the library and got them (along with some travel books for next year’s trip). I read Yes Please first, with the sole notion that I was looking forward to reading Tina Fey’s book more, and therefore I would have that as motivation to get through this first one.
For the first three or four chapters of Poehler’s book, I couldn’t focus. I would read some, but it wouldn’t grab me. (This truly has nothing to do with her story or her writing style, as now that I have finished the book, I couldn’t recommend it more). I would read a paragraph and the words would be shaky and my eyes very literally wouldn’t focus (not a health issue, more of a resistance to grounding myself). I persevered though, and a few more chapters in, all I wanted to do was sit and read her story.
By the time I finished the book (around three days), I had so much to say about it. I had laughed and cried. And I just needed to write about it. I took out my journal and made my bullet point list, but this time it wasn’t a ‘what I have done today’ list, it was a ‘what I want to discuss and not forget to write about’ list. Then I dove in. My writing was entirely different. It was thought-provoking, emotional, and it flowed. The flow thing had been an issue, too. My blog posts that I had written at the start of my blog didn’t seem to have that flow (at least in my eyes). But I had the flow back. This was exciting to me, and I couldn’t wait to share it.
I didn’t finish writing about the bullet points I had jotted down. This was due to my hand hurting after writing furiously about a topic I didn’t realize I felt so passionate about. And also because I wanted to go back and read the last few chapters of the book to refresh my memory of why certain topics were so poignant. So, it’s coming. But first let me just finish this Bossypants book… 🙂
Raising LeBar 