Dear Me

Dear Me,

         Bright Blessings! It took a crack on the head, literally, to shake loose years of self-deprecation and self-pity, allowing the inner child, the muse, if you will, to step forward and proclaim who you are. The first thing you looked for in the hospital was your little notebook and pen. You wrote something or other in a morphine-clouded haze, but you wrote it, because the writer writes.

         Your trials continue, the taxing process of healing physically and emotionally tedious and ongoing, the continued lack of control over your daily life trying. Writing is thus ever more vital to healing, to becoming who you really are. Harm none, yet do what you will. Writing what you know, what you dream, what you imagine as poetry or prose is as necessary as taking the next life-giving breath of air.

         You are the writer, and the writer writes.

         Having reaffirmed your faith, re-connecting with your spiritual roots, you embrace the guidance and community of others doing the same. You actually create energy and are able to enjoy and share with your words the warmth of one single ray of sunshine on a gray winter’s day, or elicit a wistful tear with your poetry extolling a departed kindred spirit.

         Write it down! Conquer the fear. Entrenched over years, Fear won’t leave quietly, so use it as a galvanizing force; stop letting it use you. The shades from the past who berated you, for whom you were just not good enough, are no more powerful than those who now encourage and extol your aspirations. If you allow fear of failure to continue to keep you from becoming yourself, from being the writer that you are, then you dishonor all those who believe in you, whether still on this plane or the next.

         Own who you are – the weaver of tales, the spinner of stories, the poet, the wordsmith – yes, The Writer! Now prove it – to others, but mainly, to Me!

         Submit at least one story or poem for publication monthly during the coming year. Start with one story in January, then, without waiting for the inevitably delayed response, keep writing, revising, editing, and submit another story or poem in February, and in March, and so on, honing your craft with conscientious reviews of the work of others. With tenacity and a bit of luck, you might encounter an editor with a viable brain or muse who recognizes the intrinsic merit of your writing, and will send back not a rejection form but a check for the privilege of publishing your work.

         I close by leaving you to mull over a memory. Dad said if something is important to you, and you work hard for it, it will be yours. You are a writer, it’s not just something important to you, but who you are; now work at it, and others too will recognize this fact – you are a writer. So Mote It Be!

         Now get back to writing!

With love and faith,
Your constant companion, stalwart friend, beneficent nemesis,

Me

© January 2007 - manga_kate

Written for the "Dear Me: Official Contest"