As much as things change they stay the same. As time moves forward, I am realizing how true that statement is. Last night, after I posted my last entry I went back and reread the entire history of ActiveMusing. Something stood out. How similar my current mindset is to the one I held three years ago when I rebooted the site. Then, like now, I have a wish to hone my writing craft. In one entry, I even went so far to suggest I was starting the same writing exercise these dailies are a part of. Go figure. The itch to write has been with me for a long time. This blog is the proof. I always seem to come back to it after getting distracted or prioritizing something over the writing process.  Every time I pick up the torch, my mindset is the same. The driving thought is consistent.

“I have ideas, characters, and worlds worth sharing and, I want to refine my craft so I can share these things with anyone who is gracious enough to give me some of their time.”

I became busy with important activities and responsibilities such as “completing” (we are never done learning) my education, forcing me to shift writing styles and focus away from the creative to the academic. I don’t regret that shift. After all, it resulted in graduating earlier this year with my Master’s degree in my chosen profession, something I have been working toward for the last ten years. In the process though, it seems like I have lost some of the creative edge I once had. I remember a period in my life where I could sit down in front of my computer excited to see what my brain would produce. Sure, sometimes it was difficult. There were days where it felt like work. More often though, I could write for hours without pause and let creativity flow from my finger tips. Three hours of character development, action, and story telling seemed to happen in a blink of an eye.  For hours a day I lived with my characters, their situations, love interests, political climates, and action packed conflicts. There was nothing I enjoyed more than chronicling their adventures. I lived for it.  I did this from my late teens into my mid-to-late 20s.  Then life happened and, I chose to disconnect from my creative side.  I have lost tomes of raw, unrefined story to history.   Now, after years of reflection, I wish I had not so violently severed my connection from the creative. I miss it. I wish I had attempted reconnection and attempted to cultivate my creative side as I was education.

So, here I sit restarting a project I started three years ago to find my creative again. That’s OK. It’s a work in progress. I will contact my creative side once more. I will find old characters and develop new ones. I will create worlds, magic systems, and cultures. I will drop my characters into these world and see how they react. They will once again tell me their stories. And I will once more become a bard traveling alongside them chronicling their adventures. It will just take more time than I want to get back into creative writing form.  That’s the whole point of these daily exercises. Just write.

If parts of this entry seemed raw or emotionally charged to some of my readers. You would be right. Details aside, there were painful reasons why I severed connection with my creative writing side. For a long time heart ache and agony accompanied trying to reconnect with my creative. There is a lot of history locked away behind the doors holding my creative. Over time, the sting associated with that side of me has numbed. As I suggested, I lost an important part of me when I closed those doors. Perhaps some day I will tell the story in total. For now, be assured I needed to shut those doors to survive.  Years later, today, I’m attempting to connect with my creative and, I’m not sure what it will produce.  We shall see.

Till next we meet!