Creative writing has always been in the back of my brain, itching to bubble to the top and be freed. I remember my senior year of high school, taking the creative writing class and feeling this sense of exhilaration at the words that would flow onto the paper, etched into the DNA of the universe. One word after another word.
I journaled during the C with an E, though those journal posts are private, for now. The other Stacy without an E has been poking me to journal more, followed by watching my co-worker V posting for the last 100+ days, which lit the fire under the creative writing preverbal pot.
Writing doesn’t always come easy. There needs to be a mood swirling about, giving the lit match an accelerant. I also don’t write in a way that would please even the lax of grammar police. Thoughts are. They don’t form proper sentences or abide traditional guidelines. Thoughts just are.
I have a folder in the basement stuffed full of teenage angst. Poetry filled with anger, sadness and longing. I have one has engraved on the inside of my skull, I don’t even need to close my eyes to remember that starting lines.
Acid brains, burning in hell.
People screaming, bodies for sale.
I believe that the way I think, the way that I feel, the way that I write, is why I love music. My words feel like music to me, making you pause. Think. Feel. That may be rather boastful of me, and I choose not to give way to the imposter syndrome that lurks around the darkness waiting for the perfect moment to step into the light and declare “She is a fraud!”
I turn off grammarly, I turn on my “Writing Music” playlist and I follow the lessons my Creative Writing teacher taught me my senior year. Write. Don’t worry about misspellings. Don’t worry about structure. Don’t worry about making sense. Write as if you had to write to save your life from drowning in the words that have been ever growing in your head. Let them free. Let them fill the open spaces around you and become real, released and free. Write. Dream. Love.