After much deliberation with Visual Artist Kendra, Blogger Kendra, Creative Writer Kendra and of course my lovely characters Ania and Lief….
I have decided that I need to give my Writer Kendra an open field to frolic in, to play around, to just sit and be.
Yesterday I was reading through some writers blogs (my newest addiction) and specifically I was reading this post about shitty first drafts.I have to say I love Anne Lamot (who talked about Shitty First Drafts in her book Bird by Bird) and it made me come back to a post I wrote a long time ago: Photography vs Writing
In that post I was talking about how, even though my first love was photography/visual art…writing had a special place in my heart and at times its easier to write than to create visual art.
As I was rereading that post, I realized that photography isn’t really in my heart anymore. If you haven’t noticed by now…my passion of photography has left me. I don’t feel as much joy towards it and I have gone weeks now without taking photos and don’t feel as pained as I once did by doing that. I still think visual arts are beautiful, one of the reasons I continue this blog and continue to do art journals of any kind.
But…visual arts don’t grip me as they once did. And for the moment I need to accept that and move on.
In case I haven’t said it clearly, I am taking a break from school next year, I have a post written about why but I haven’t been able to bring myself to post it. Maybe someday.
But anyways, this break is to help me figure out what I want to do…where my passion lies and where my dreams are. Without photography, I feel dreamless.
It’s an awful feeling for a person who has always had a dream, always had a goal and thought that dreams are one of the most important things in life.
Without a dream…where do you go?
When I wrote that Photography vs Writing post, I was 100% sure where my heart and my dreams lay. Now I am not.
Most of the time I very much hate photography and visual art now. Which is very tragic, and something I’m trying to to deal with and accept that it’s okay.
I am trying to find out a new dream in my life, after a rocky 2 years…well things are still very rocky but there are good things in my future that I need to embrace and a few more obstacles I need to jump through before I can fully settle down and work on finding the new me, the new dream in my life.
I am rambling a bit. ( I should probably be more succinct as I writer shouldn’t I?)
As I was thinking about the lessened hold of visual art on me, I realized that as I was rereading my post and how I wrote that about my writing being in second place…
I thought what if it never was second place? What if it’s just been waiting on the side lines, quiet waiting for me to realize…hey you belong first and you always will.
I’ve been writing for several years longer than it took me to embraced any kind of visual art as my own.
Right now what is driving me is a novel.
Writing.
Words.
I love them, I could sit and write or read or read about writing for days and days and days. (and that’s what I’ve been doing for several weeks now actually)
I think maybe it’s time I accepted that my love of words has been there longer and has never betrayed me. I think it’s time I actually give my writing a chance in the sunlight and to let it live as number 1 in my heart.
I won’t disillusion myself. I know it will be hard. Trying to get published is difficult in and of itself. But sitting down and making myself write everyday, learning eventually to not hate every single word I put down…will be difficult.
But as Anne Lamott says, all first drafts are shitty and it’s okay.
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