Vulnerable Writing and Letting it in...

So I took a workshop at a writers group on Thurday night. The speaker was Author/Publisher Mark W. Dendy of Coffee Cup Press. I enjoyed many parts of his workshop but one area of his topic stood out the most. The topic of being vulnerable in your writing. I had to ask myself if I was vulnerable in my writing and the answer was clear. I couldn't have written a 75,000 word novel about love, pain, loss and triumph unless I let my feelings flow. I never set out to write a novel, nor did I ever imagine it would be published by such a wonderful publishing company. I wrote because I loved my characters. They inspired me to keep going and I guess a part of me vicariously lived through them. You see I created what I must had been lacking in my life at the time. I created people that took on their own personality and as much as I would like to pretend that they were not part of who I am, they are. Now that does not mean that Alexander, a evil vilian in my novel is part of me and that I want or have those tendencies to be like him but his nastyness definately made me angry and outraged. But here is the vulnerable part...In a month or two, many friends, family and strangers will be reading my words that I strung together into paragraphs and pages. It contains parts of me and that's just down right scary. My thoughts and emotions will be open for all to see when at this point only a select few have read them. Lets just be frank here...that is major vulnerability! Up unitl recently I was a very private person and soon many people will know how my mind works. I have made many mistakes in life, and some of my biggest in just the last few months. I have been so afraid to feel emotions that when I finally did, I hid behind my pretend world of writing and denied any of it was real. But guess what? It's all coming out people..I am writing book two of The Summerland Series and all I seem to do is pour my heart out into the pages where the feelings are controllable. Where I can control if I want to feel pain or love or anger. Maybe, just maybe writing and being vulnerable to it is the only way for me to create. But I also am learning that if I'm ever going to feel, really feel..I will have to let go of fearing love and the pain that comes with it and embrace the possibilities that what I write in my stories are right here in the real world..I just have to let it all in. I wish all of you writers, dreamers and hopeless romantics a lifetime of good books and great love and the vulnerabilty to let it in. Happy Monday, Elizabeth Cheryl