Write on Target

I remember seeing the movie, “The Holiday ” where Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet exchange houses for the Christmas holiday.  Kate Winslet meets a former Hollywood writer, played by Eli Wallach.  As their friendship grows, she comes to discover the many phrases he has released into the culture by her saying the phrase and he says “I wrote that.”

What a marvelous editorial for a writer.  There have been so many writers in history, known and unknown, who have contributed to our rich cultural ‘phraseology’ by what they have written.

For years (more than I care to remember), I have wanted to be a professional writer.  The closest I came was publishing short quips used by a national magazine as a monthly feature.

Instead of following my passion, it had to take its place in the priority of my life.  I enjoy my family, and they are what they are today, because I deferred what I wanted for what they needed.

I have not been idle these many years.  My talents as a writer have been used by employers and organizations to further their ends, and I willingly collaborated my talents with their needs.  It kept my passion at bay, feeding it with pages that became reams of reports, newsletters, and organizational plans.  And, I guess, since I received compensation where wrting was part of my job, I can consider myself a professional writer.

Now I find myself in a time when my children are grown and have their own families.  It is an opportunity for me to consider writing as more than a part-time and less than a full-time occupation (I avoid the word ‘job’ for its negative connotations).

And the question I ask myself is, who is in command?  Who is the ultimate decision maker on what I spend my time?  I have to look in the mirror for that answer.  Yes, I deferred my desires for the well-being of my family, and somewhere along the timeline, my strong desire was forced further and further back in importance.  I didn’t lose command of my writing time, I gave it away.  I put it into a drawer for the ‘someday’ that never came.

A wise person told me once that “graveyards are full of unrealized dreams.”  They were correct.  In my ‘Now’ I have the opportunity to take my dream out of the drawer and take command of my writing and my life.

So what are the goals of this blog?  A major goal is to encourage myself that what I write is more than “Yadda, yadda,” a phrase which has found its way into the Oxford English Dictionary.  Who wrote that?  (It actually was first used by Lenny Bruce, but the Seinfeld series (episode 153, 8th season) brought it into our common language.  Sorry, I digress.

One of my goals in this blog is to give myself encouragement that I can do this.  Family and friends will try to give encouragement, but I have found that encouragement has to come from within myself.  That little voice inside has to be always saying “you can do this.”

I will encourage myself by listening to my little inside voice and publishing this public written record of my thoughts and experiences on writing, recaps of articles I find on writing techniques, as well as my own stories from flash fiction to novels.  That’s enough to start with as I take command.

And who knows, maybe someday, someone will utter a phrase, and I can say, “I wrote that.”  Or better still, someone will say to me, “You wrote that.”

P.S.  The movie was marvelous.  If you want to get it, here’s the link.

DVD    Soundtrack