Coming Out From The Past - A Writer's Old Journaling

The S post of the A to Z Challenge (this one) got me thinking about the past a lot – the post where I spoke about how an old friend and I were caught shoplifting in our youth. 

I did go to her old house and was surprised to learn that her parents still live there. My friend wasn’t there, but one of her sisters was. It turns out that my friend lives just a block away from my mom, she works at a high school in Hayward, the city I live, and her other sister works as a probation officer like I do. How things go is just funny to me! I mean, I hadn’t seen her in about 30 years.

I left my phone and email with the mom, but of course I ended up writing the wrong number! But she did email me and I sent her the right number. I’m looking forward to catching up with her.

Well, this got me the idea to go over some old journals and to post some things here. Some journal entries are VERY personal, not to mention show me in a vulnerable light. But, it seemed like an interesting idea. Here goes.

This is something I wrote years ago that I don’t even remember writing. (I’m sure there are at least a few journal entries I won’t remember having written!) It’s not dated, but the entry before that was on 12/6/97. Unfortunately, nothing after that was dated, so it’s hard to say if this was also written in 1997 or not. Since this journal entry was about writing, I thought it would make for a great start to this weekly theme. Hopefully soon I'll come up with a label and badge for these Tuesday posts.

When A Writer Creates

It’s the act of creating, like drawing and even doing jigsaw puzzles. It’s seeing how something is created from nothing or from jumbled things. The act of putting letters, words, sentences, paragraphs on paper is a beautiful experience to me. And then seeing, reading, what comes out of it… if it’s something good, it’s magnificent. If it’s bad, it’s still something to be at least a little proud of, even if a little ashamed of also.

It’s a great feeling to realize you’re the only one who’ve thought to write this story, character, this trouble. Although I hate when people say this, you feel almost godlike. You’ve created a world, people, lives, interactions, love, hate, murder, just simple pleasures like enjoying how vanilla ice cream melts in your mouth. You made that person who enjoyed that. You’ve created someone who dies a horrid death… yet no one has been hurt.

Maybe from the outcome, someone’s been moved, touched, made to understand something that nothing else in life has made him understand. Writing can give someone a reason to get up in the morning when they just have to find out, What happens next…?

It’s a way of creating that pits your wits against your experiences, which results in as great a creation or feeling of love as rearing a beloved child. It seems almost out of your control how it finally turns out.

This writing came from this journal. I liked sketch books because they didn't have lines and writing was more free flowing. I didn't have much in this journal, only a few entries, which is why it's hard to be sure when the above writing was written.