A vocation is a calling to a particular role or aspect of life.

It is also a story though, the beginning of a chapter, life’s chapter, from which you are forever compelled to turn the pages of, never knowing when the sentence ends or the ink runs dry, but always anticipating a romantic encounter, terrible conflict, beautiful memory or dramatic twist.

Craving this adventure and its passage, I suppose that I opened my eyes a writer, eager to tell my story and embark on my own glorious victory.

A pivotal moment at which I reached a crossroads was the moment of a diagnosis, my mother’s diagnosis. As a chilfd, I could have seen this illness as the final hurdle, the period in the sentence, the end.

However, this chapter was not yet ready to be ended, for the audience had not yet completed its reading. The full-stop became a comma, and I realised with new eyes that I had to tell my stories, the right and the wrong, becauseafter nearly losing a loved one, who knows when we reach the final chapter.

Facing this prospect, I resolved to make it a good one, to take up my pen, sand scribble with love the pages of my history, where finally I had found ‘the write story.’

#author #writer #competition #fantasy #fiction #dream #blog

hannahvernon.co.uk

I heard this poem many years ago and I think this part especially refects how I feel. How ever I disagree with the overall message of this poem. It says that only the chosen can write but I think anyone can be a writer if they work at it hard enough. Writting is hard. It takes so much of my time. But I also love it and I would wither away if I had to stop.

This is a part of Charles Bukowski's poem.

"unless it comes out of

your soul like a rocket,

unless being still would

drive you to madness or

suicide or murder,

don't do it.

unless the sun inside you is

burning your gut,

don't do it.

when it is truly time,

and if you have been chosen,

it will do it by

itself and it will keep on doing it

until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was."

writers are the people who don’t let there imaginary friends die. i wrote that in a challenge a bit ago. i guess i started writing when i was eleven. it’s embarassing i see so many who started when they were four, five. the minute they knew what pencil was created for. i started writing because it was my way of running away. i couldn’t run away. i wouldn’t make in very far. besides “a place can’t take away your problems,” i read that on a tee-shirt or was on bathroom wall? i can’t remember anyway. writing helped me cope with loneliness, when i was too awkward for friends. when people found me repulsive, when i had problems that i didn’t feel i could talk about. i was never a diary type of girl. i couldn’t write about my day to day life that would just be depressing. i couldn’t write about my day to day problems that would just be stupid. i mean i tried to be after a while i’d look through them and realize that never came far. never really rose above the problems it didn’t help me it just depressed me. so my writing became my diary it was a way to tell my story without being so blunt, without anyone catching a glimspe of it and thinking that i was the problem child. that i was crazy, that i had issues which all may very well be true. it was without the frills of saying dear diary today i cried on the bathroom floor. i was much too old for imaginary friends but somehow i couldn’t let them die they had seemed to hold my hand on stormy nights. they had been the only constant friend i had that couldn’t die, or grow tired of me. i’m not trying to sound deep the fact is i’m really quite very shallow. but when it comes to writing i feel like my heroines understand me. i know i created them so they should, but quite frankly i feel like as i create them they come alive. i wish life was like writing a book. i guess there would alot of backspacing and erasing but at the end of the day it would be creative, it would mean that with the mark of a word with the tilt of a pen life could change life could expand and dissipate. you wouldn’t be afraid to step out and speak what was on your mind. there wouldn’t be repressed feelings that weighed on your heart like a 100 pound weight that you had to lug around. i guess what i’m saying is that writing has helped me accept that life is crazy and unexpected. it’s helped me see that you can’t take back things said or done like we wish to. wow i just looked up and realized i’m at 500 words in less than five min. i guess it’s clear that writing helps and that i ramble endlessly.

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One of the first stories I ever wrote was in kindergarten. It was about my family, and how I believed they were vampires, of all things. Admittedly, the story was short and silly. Not to mention, my fledgling penmanship made it barely legible. But, it was my first true experience with writing, and I think that was what sparked my interest in it.

That story made me realize I could write anything into existence. I could take a normal situation and turn it into something fantastical. An entire world of endless possibility was opened to me. Throughout my childhood and early teens, I wrote story after story, poem after poem. But, as much as I enjoyed writing, I wasn't too consistent with it. I started countless stories, only to leave them without a proper ending.

My high school Creative Writing class was what really got me invested in writing. I wasn't too interested in most of the optional classes, but I needed more credit to graduate, and I'd always liked writing. So, Creative Writing was the obvious choice for me. Undoubtedly, this class helped me stay more consistent and productive with writing. You had to finish your stories and poems, or your grade would suffer. That compelled me to finish every tale I began.

Since then, I write on a regular basis. It's mostly poetry and shorter pieces, but they help me to decompress and get my feelings out into the world. I've always been more on the quite, reserved side, so I don't verbally talk about my emotions much. I tend to bottle everything up inside, so writing gave me an outlet I desperately needed. And posting on The Prose has greatly boosted my confidence in my own writing. I now feel much more comfortable sharing my inner thoughts and feelings with others.

Even more than that, I feel writing is something I need to do, something I must. If I go for a while without writing, I start to feel as if something's missing in my life. It's like there is a void only words and ink can fill. Writing has truly become one of the most important aspects of my life.

I first started writing for pleasure when I was in college. My genre was poetry. I lived on a beautiful campus with lots of streams, wildlife, etc. which inspired me. I would often write poems about the peaceful tranquility of my surroundings. Poetry also gave me an outlet for my emotions. When I experienced a crush on a young man who sat next to me in class, I wrote about the feelings I was too shy to express. When he revealed that he wasn't interested in me any more than a casual friendship, I expressed my heartbreak through my poems. Writing became work when I started my first job. I was in customer service but our department had a newspaper where I was often solicited to write articles. Somebody at work suggested that I try my hand at Technical Writing. I wrote a lot of dry manuals, and these days, I do more XML coding and graphic mock ups at my jobs than actual writing.

More recently, two of my best friends inspired me to write fiction. One asked me to proofread a draft of a novel she had been working on. Another, started a fledgeling editing and self-publishing company where she often asked for feedback on her own work and help with her business. This inspired me to write a semi-autobiographical novel about the first time I fell hard for somebody and got my heart broken. Although I seemed to have it together on the outside, I had many unresolved feelings from that past romantic encounter. I felt that by expressing those feelings, I could work them out and gain closure. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a disaster. The book was more autobiographical than fiction and several of my now former friends recognized themselves. This caused a lot off fallout and I essentially lost a core friend group that I had since high school and college. One person in particular was very outraged and she used her "reviews" to trash my character and alienate those friends who were on the fence. This experience made me disillusioned with writing outside of my job.

Since visiting this site, I have gotten back to my roots of poetry writing. I don't think I have it in me to be a novelist but the poems I have created here have brought me back to finding pleasure in my work. I am very grateful to The Prose for helping me find joy in writing once more and awakened my love for it.

It starts with imagination

A creative escape

From duldrums and responsibilities

Into my own space

Where I can do anything

Then it ends with silence

Alone, when I finally see

All my characters are hollow

But the world and folks around me

Have infinitely more stories and adventures

Then it starts again

This time, with a spark

Stolen from the daily gods of life

And forged in the dark

Inspired by my sojourn in the world off page

Eventually it will stop

When reality beckons me back

To heed the calls of friends and windmills

When I find that I lack

The will to keep imaginging, when I could be doing

But one day when I'm gray

And my hands barely type

I'll return to the page

Before they fade, while my memory is ripe

I'll try once more to create what I can no longer explore

I was eight when I wrote my first story Hotdog. It involved a little boy on his grandparents farm with a variety of farm animals all bickering and vying for the boys attention. It was the first time I took my make believe story in my mind and brought it to life on paper. My mom helped me type it up and “published” it on fancy Christmas background paper.

In high school I had an amazing creative writing teacher who gave us a prompt where we wrote about conversing with a loved one who’d passed away. I wrote about about my mom and a typical conversation we would have had if she was still alive. It helped me to write down and create fun banter between the both of us. It alleviated the feeling a bit that I missed out on getting to have those conversations with her.

Overall I use writing to heal my emotional wounds and get my over active imagination out of my head on paper to keep my sanity. I was the kid that would open the glass screen door to let my Pokémon inside my house and talk out loud with them. I now write since talking to imaginary creatures isn’t socially acceptable.

I started because I was told I wasn't good enough. A teacher once suggested I needed a tutor for English. Hearing it broke me for a bit. I always liked stories, whether I was reading them or writing them for myself. I was always creatively inclined. Hell, my parents are both working creatives, one as a creative director and one as a professor of illustration. My hobby was music, but my passion was writing, and it all culminated my last year of college when I came in second place in a creative writing contest with a story I wrote in a bit of a dark place. The validation was nice, but what was better was the gained knowledge that I can actually do this and have people like what I have to say. It's gratifying if nothing else.

I fell in love with writing in 1st grade, all thanks to the best english teacher I could have ever asked for. He made using your imagination a daily task with crazy prompts to write about every day. From aliens invading the school or suddenly finding yourself invisible, everyday was a new adventure and I loved it. And that's why I write. To find adventure.

When life becomes too routine, too repetitive, too depressing, writing can make everything better. It helps me overcome my problems in life and find meaning in things. It gives me a better perspective on life. Any time I have to do something that I don't want to or think will be unpleasant I tell myself maybe it'll be good writing material and I push forward. Writing has helped me experience new things and live a happier life.