I started writing, with absolutely no intention of sharing it with anyone. It was journaling for the purpose of figuring out the mess of my life. It certainly wasn’t art. Its only job was to be honest.

Then one day, a poem popped out of me and into my notebook. I had just finished a meditation, and it honestly felt like it wasn’t even me who wrote it. I was so excited by this poem, and I knew that it was a great poem. Because it didn’t feel like something I did, I shared it in an online group I was part of. It was the first time I’d shared anything I’d created with excitement since I was in elementary school writing creepy stories with my best friend.

Story-telling is a huge part of being a human. It isn’t some special skill that only people with creative writing degrees can do. It is far more innate than we let ourselves believe. Like any other creative endeavour, the act of doing it is the whole point. Whether other people think it’s good, is secondary. I am forever grateful that I began writing with absolutely no consideration for if it was good or for what anyone else might think of it. I wrote for me.

Because I know that technique matters, I take some workshops and classes here and there to become more effective at it. The first official poetry class I took at MUN was so hard for me. Not because I couldn’t learn the techniques or concepts, but because I was now introducing a judge to my writing. Writing, knowing it was going to be graded, was fucking with my process. Now, this course was purely for fun. The grade didn’t matter even slightly. I learned lots of things during that course, but I think the biggest growth came from learning to deal with my inner critic at a deeper level.

There was a time, not so long ago, that I couldn’t even get myself to say the words, I am a writer. Then I worked to own them and say them confidently. Now, it almost feels like saying, I am a breather. Of course I can breathe. It’s not that special. Maybe it was putting myself around lots of other writers who almost universally experienced heaps of self-doubt. Maybe it was reading some truly horrible books by people with utter faith in their ability. I think mostly, it was listening to so many incredibly brilliant and interesting women tell me that they have a story they want to tell, but ‘they aren’t writers.’

In the age of self-publishing, anyone can be a published author too. The gatekeepers to this title have left the building and I would personally love to see more people with a story sitting in their hearts putting that story to paper and sharing it with the world.

Writing says I care how I feel. What I think matters. I trust what I know. It is about understanding myself and what motivates me.