My Love Affair<\/p>\n
I have a love affair with writing. It\u2019s\u00a0the last thing I think about before I fall asleep and it\u2019s the first thing I\u00a0think about when I wake up. Every morning, I sit at my computer, put my fingers\u00a0on the keyboard and let them fly across the letters. It reminds me of a Ouija\u00a0board when my hands take off as if I have nothing to do with it. I love the
clicking sound of my mouse and I get a lot of the same benefits from it that\u00a0meditators get from meditating. I lose time. The tension in my body releases. I\u00a0breathe and when my thoughts wander, I keep bringing my mind back to what I\u2019m\u00a0doing. When I\u2019m through, while I go about my day and into the night, I get\u00a0ideas and I jot them down. I\u2019m a morning writer and an evening thinker.<\/p>\n
I wanted to write before I knew how\u00a0to read. I was five years old, sitting cross legged on the beige and green\u00a0carpeting in my living room, scribbling in my Cinderella coloring book. My\u00a0parents were in matching upholstered chairs, reading the newspaper,\u00a0hypnotically handing sections to each other and dropping them into a pile on
the floor. My older sister was doing a book report on \u201cTreasure Island.\u201d I\u00a0vowed that as soon as I learned to read, I\u2019d write stories about the things I\u00a0dreamed up in my imagination.<\/p>\n
I kept my promise to myself. After\u00a0I finished reading \u201cDick and Jane and their dog, Spot,\u201d I started choosing words\u00a0and finding other words that rhymed. This expanded into poems and by the time I
was ten years old, I had a collection of very bad poetry. I didn\u2019t care if it\u00a0was good or bad. I didn\u2019t consider it. I just kept on going and while no one\u00a0encouraged me, no one discouraged me either. That was lucky. It was simply something\u00a0I did for myself, it was my private world, and I didn\u2019t let anyone else in.<\/p>\n
As I got older, I started submitting\u00a0stories and books to publishers and I got a lot of rejections. They really hurt\u00a0but that\u2019s the life I chose. In Stephen King\u2019s book, \u201cOn Writing,\u201d he talks\u00a0about banging a nail into the wall and sticking all his rejection on the nail.\u00a0When it was filled to capacity, he banged another one into the wall\u00a0<\/p>\n
Along with my rejections, however, I\u00a0also got publishing deals. My career has been very good to me. I\u2019ve traveled\u00a0the globe, met extraordinary people and I\u2019ve had a myriad of books make their
way up the bestseller lists.<\/p>\n
When I was in my prime, getting a\u00a0book deal was exciting. Marketers from major publishing houses flew from New\u00a0York to Los Angeles, took me to lunch at expensive restaurants, convened with\u00a0me as we set up a plan, and booked radio interviews and TV appearances. This\u00a0was before social media. Before things changed. Nowadays, instead of getting the\u00a0royal treatment, a marketer texts you to ask you how you plan to market your\u00a0book. It\u2019s far less attractive and much more labor intensive.<\/p>\n
I was spending time with a couple\u00a0of my friends who are very active in their promoting and \u00a0speaking careers. They work hard at it and they have loads of social media followers. They market their books, they do podcasts, they do online interviews, they post regularly on Instagram and they do Facebook Live. It\u2019s a full time job. When I heard them discussing their work and how to attract more followers, I thought I should be doing that, too . . . until I realized that I don\u2019t want to. And I don\u2019t need to. I did a great deal of that in the past but now, all I wanted to do was just write. I remembered my childhood when I wrote for the pure joy of it. Not to please anyone else. Not to be judged, to get book deals or to make myself feel productive. I did it because that\u2019s what I do. Meditators meditate. Painters paint. Dancers dance. And writers write.<\/p>\n
When I was a child, my aunt used to\u00a0take me to the movies to see musicals and when a song started, I\u2019d dance up and\u00a0down the aisles in the dark. I didn\u2019t do it for anyone else. I didn\u2019t think\u00a0about people watching me. I wasn\u2019t even aware of them. I just did it. In the\u00a0same spirit, everything I put on the page helps me heal and survive. I vwrite\u00a0for myself, I\u2019ve written my way through loneliness. Through relationships.\u00a0Through falling love and breaking up. I\u2019ve written my way through fear, anxiety\u00a0and doubt. It\u2019s my constant companion, it\u2019s a friend and it\u2019s always there when\u00a0I need it.<\/p>\n
Today, I encourage my students to stop\u00a0judging themselves and start writing. It isn\u2019t something to fear. It\u2019s not the\u00a0bogey man who\u2019s going to prove that you\u2019re no good. When you welcome it as a\u00a0friend, it\u2019ll take you places you never knew existed. You don\u2019t have to be
great at it. You don\u2019t even have to be good at it. You don\u2019t have to begin at\u00a0the beginning. You can start in the middle.. You don\u2019t have to finish what you\u00a0start. If you feel the urge, pick something meaningful in your life and write\u00a0about it. When you put your feelings on the page, things that triggered you in\u00a0the past become dimmer. Emotions take on a new clarity. Thoughts dissolve and\u00a0your heart opens. It\u2019s a way to process your life.<\/p>\n
For me, writing for no one and no\u00a0particular reason is as legitimate as selling a book to a publisher and doing a\u00a0book tour. I get to pick and choose which of my friends I want to read to and\u00a0that is enough for now. The rewards I get are beautiful and I don\u2019t run out of
energy. I have no deadlines so I can stop and start whenever I want. I don\u2019t\u00a0know about the future but since I\u2019ve been doing this in one form or another\u00a0since I learned to read, I expect I\u2019ll just keep on doing it.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My Love Affair I have a love affair with writing. It\u2019s\u00a0the last thing I think about before I fall asleep and it\u2019s the first thing I\u00a0think about when I wake up. Every morning, I sit at my computer, put my fingers\u00a0on the keyboard and let them fly across the letters. It reminds me of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2552"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2553,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2552\/revisions\/2553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}