I recently read On Writing by Stephen King. After seeing that book recommended over and over by members of the IWSG, I figured it was a sa...

Farewell

I recently read On Writing by Stephen King. After seeing that book recommended over and over by members of the IWSG, I figured it was a safe bet that it would be a great read. And it did not disappoint. I had never read any of his books since the movies I've seen always creep me out, but now that I know what a great writer he is, I'll have to give one a try. This one, as the title says, was about writing, and he had some very helpful tips and advice that I will definitely be incorporating into my work. But my favorite part was the first section, his memoir about his life and how he came to be the kind of writer that he is. Reading and hearing people's real-life stories are always my favorite. Fiction is fun, but I tend to connect a lot more with a story I believe to be real. And speaking of real...

It's time to get to the real point, which isn't to give you a book review of On Writing, because if you're interested in writing, you have either already read it or need to, so just go read it yourself. Today's topic is to say goodbye. I will no longer be writing here on "Mel's Empty Journal" because well...it's done. The goal of this blog has been more than met. My journal is clearly no longer empty. I will leave this site up if for nothing else, as a reminder for me that I am quite capable of writing for public consumption, without much worry as to who will judge me or who I may offend. As Mr. King said...
"Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway."
Thank you for that Stephen. It has been over 7 years since I started this blog, and it took a good chunk of that time for me to realize I don't actually care about being a member of polite society. I care a great deal more about writing truthfully. Which is what I have attempted to do here and what I intend to do in the future.

And in the future, Brian and I are thinking of combining our creative efforts in the world of music and writing. As the opening quote says, art is here to support life. We have both worked hard at our respective art but feel like we're failing in some ways. But that is only the case when we think of it as being our one main purpose in life, where we live only for art and have no other responsibilities. But this is not reality. We have a very full life. We have kids. We have work. Our art is not the center of our life, nor should it be. It is here to help us grow, push us out of our comfort zones, inspire us.

With hopes of inspiring you as well, we are considering starting a new blog and email newsletter. We've thought of some ideas for it, like posting more regular music from Brian (and occasionally me), more writing from me (and occasionally Brian) mostly along the positive theme, and possibly even a podcast...maybe, we'll see about that. But there will definitely be music and writing. Before we decide for sure if we want to do this, we'd like to get as many people as possible on the email newsletter, for two important reasons. First, to see how much interest there is. And second, because we are more than a little sick of social media and would prefer to not have to spend so much time on there to share our work. You don't have to worry about us emailing too often as it will be rare if we have time to put something together more than once a month. So if you could kindly drop your email address in the box below, you will save us all the hassle of checking social media for one more damn thing.





Well my friends, all good things come to an end, I bid you a fond farewell, and such and such nonsense. Thank you so much for reading. You have given me my favorite gift... hope that writing is not a waste of my time. ♡

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Happy New Year! And happy first Wednesday of the year, which means it's Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG) day! Today's q...

The Question for a Writer: January IWSG


Happy New Year! And happy first Wednesday of the year, which means it's Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG) day! Today's question is:
What are your favorite and least favorite questions people ask you about your writing?
Well do I have a fun question to answer that question (wait, what?)! This question somehow manages to simultaneously be my favorite and least favorite! It is the seemingly easiest and most obvious question a writer will get...

"What are you writing about?"

Yep, it's silly for a writer not to like that question, but during NaNoWriMo 2017, that was THE question everyone asked. I quickly learned to not tell anyone that I was doing NaNoWriMo if I didn't feel like talking about it, but it was the first (and still only) time I'd done anything like that, so it was hard not to talk about it. If it was with friends who read my blog regularly or who know me well enough to know my history, it was a good question since they were likely already aware that I write about my recovery. But with anyone else, it was, well, awkward. To say "I'm writing about my eating disorder recovery" is a lot of information. Obviously if I'm writing about recovery that means I had to have an eating disorder in the first place. Most people don't want to talk about things like eating disorders, drug addictions, alcoholism, depression, mental illness, anything real and challenging and meaningful, etc. So, that's obviously all the more reason to talk about it! Which brings me to why it's my favorite question, even though I'm not yet to the point where I'm comfortable answering it.

Being afraid of people finding out my struggles with anorexia, depression, and OCD is something I'm just going to have to get over. Assuming I ever finish the damn book, I will have to promote it. And to promote is to talk about it with everybody I know and try to spread the word and get people to read it. That's going to be challenging enough without me having some weird paranoia about people finding out the thing I'm telling publicly. Duh, people are going to find out! Yes, there will be people who will judge me and not understand. Yes, it could even hurt my actual career, which has nothing to do with mental health or eating disorders. Well it shouldn't really hurt my career, but there is a chance it could cause some weirdness since I will soon be blogging for work, so if anyone started Googling my name, they'd find out.

But I'm not going to let that that stop me. First off, anyone who decides to hold my experiences against me is a douche bag and not someone I want to work with anyways. And second, the main purpose of writing the book and baring my soul to whoever may read it, is to help spread awareness. Awareness about mental health and recovery, which is something our society desperately needs. So, in some part of myself, I'll have to want everyone in my life to find out about this because the more people know, the more I've done what I've set out to do.

Probably would've been easier to have my first book be a work of fiction about something superficial that was easy to write and talk about it. But that wouldn't be me at all!

Happy 2019!


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