Scaling walls to find creative freedom

It’s been years since I’ve done any creative writing. Once I hit high school, writing became strictly research papers, persuasive essays, and lab reports. I’ve gone through random spells of journaling in the past two decades, but there’s been no creative writing. No poetry, no short stories, and certainly no novels. And it wasn’t just that I wasn’t writing creatively…I wasn’t even thinking creatively anymore. As I got older and life filled with more and more responsibilities, I allowed all of my creative outlets to shut down–writing went first, then crafty projects followed, and for several years I even stopped reading because there was “no time.”

Making this commitment to blog daily throughout 2013 might just be my own personal prison break. I’ve scaled the wall of responsibilities, both real and imagined, crawled carefully over the barbed-wire of my own inhibitions, and now find myself standing, somewhat bemused, in the world of anything is possible. I’ve read three books since January, and have two currently in progress (that doesn’t hold a candle to my high school reading pace, but it’s a vast improvement over the wordless drought that’s parched my life since the mid-90s). For my first tentative attempts at fiction in more than twenty years, I’ve found great support from other writers in the blogosphere, and I credit that encouragement for a marked increase in the number of spontaneous creative thoughts I’ve been having the past week. I hope the trickle implies that a dam burst is imminent. For the first time, I feel like a notebook that goes everywhere I go might actually be an ally in capturing some of these thoughts for future use, rather than an enemy sitting in silent accusation, adding more pressure because of its disuse. The taste of creative freedom is as addictive as Oreos, and I find myself willing, even eager, to spend more and more time in front of the computer chasing words and ideas down long-disused pathways, brushing aside cobwebs with every step. Maybe there’s a glimmer of hope, after all, that I can be a writer, not just in thought, but also in deed.