Ylana Maya - Committing to creating!

So it has been roughly 4 months since that beautiful day of clarity. The day of decision!

I remember being sat around, constantly weighed down by the thoughts of what I should be doing with my life. I remember thinking... "I need to stop trailing around blindly, what the hell am I going to do with my life... I can't live in customer service jobs 'til the end of my days."

I remember racking my brain over this very complex decision to move forward for quite some time, with quite a lot of intense contemplation. Squinting my face like a baby passing stool, in concentration of what the heck I should be doing. I remember feeling every single one of my cogs spinning around and around in my head, as I attempted to solve this very difficult equation.

As you can imagine, that moment of eureka was an experience I welcomed with open arms. All of a sudden it was so infallibly clear, I should take the route of THE INFAMOUS WRITER! (After-all, given my thirst for knowledge and understanding, paired with my desire to know an awful lot about everything while simultaneously knowing absolutely nothing about anything at all, how else was I going to apply myself?)

In theory this has to be one of the best coping strategies for life there ever was:

Something in my life goes to shit, write it in a humorous format.

Something amazing happens, write out the beauty of that amazing-ness.

Someone makes me feel like shit, write them as a character being tortured.

Someone I've never met before makes lustrous eye contact from across the room while I'm out having drinks with friends. Will I approach that person? Yes! Of course I will! I shall allow the story of our lives together flow without ever having to say a single 'hello'.

Someone betrays me and provokes deep hurt, anger and hatred... looks like I've found my next character to kill off.

Someone decides to take advantage of me, I write down the moment Karma reclaims the debt.

Need to empathise with someone? That's okay I can write as if I am them. Put myself directly in their shoes and try to write the world from their eyes. Perspective shift!

BUT!

Yes... there is a 'but'... and a mighty 'but' at that!

Although my ideas have been ever so sound in theory and although the prospect of making a difference in even one readers life is so very motivational... I seldom put in anywhere near as much work as I should be putting in to make this idea manifest completely.

Don't get me wrong, I have notebooks I write in and scrivener documents I have hidden away from the public eye... however I'm failing to see any improvement and I have been - up to this point - lacking in some serious discipline with regards to getting those words out.

So! This brings me on to my next point... I am setting some disciplinary standards for myself!

I have decided to write every day on my little blog. Each day I will find a random writing challenge online and I will write to my hearts content following the restraints of the challenge of the day. This will be in conjunction to writing in my journal as and when I require it and of course writing in my mysterious scrivener documents for some of my more secret developments.

Through my research it is clear that - as obvious as it may seem to some - I am best off pushing myself outside of my comfort zone with my writing and going at it on a whim, at times.

For my first 30 days I will be using this challenge shared by one beautiful procrastinating blogger that I found during my research. (30 Day Writing Challenge)

During this 30 days, I will devote some time to reading as much as possible in order to try out imitating other authors as part of my writing development. I quite like the idea of applying Dan Brown's writing voice to a story about pirates... If that's even possible... I don't really know yet, my writing capabilities as stands are fairly limited. All in good time, hey.

I always enjoyed writing poetry and I can't really  remember why I stopped with it, I think I started getting overly critical of the fact I was always writing about the same topics, love and general depressive ideas. Excuses, excuses. I have recently realised how much this being overly critical of what I'm writing has hindered my progress... So for the 52-week challenge I think I may just focus on writing at least one poem a week for 52 weeks...

I guess this finalises my blog, Fingers crossed, I can keep up the disciplined approach.

Here we go!

Thank you for letting me share my journey with you.

8 Creative Writing Challenges

52 Week Challenge