love of writing – Write 2 Be

Back to the beginning of a dream

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I felt when I first felt I was meant to become a writer. I was only 6 years old when I realized the way that words can affect people and when I knew that writing was what I wanted to do with my life. However, I was 10 when the words finally began to come to me, first in the form of poetry, and then in the form of telling stories. I’ve always had a wild imagination and when I started writing I felt so confident in my talent and my abilities to craft a story and to express my feelings through the art of poetry.

In fact, at that age, and with such low self esteem in so many other areas, it was just about the only thing I was confident and sure about. My passion for writing then was like no other that I had ever felt or have felt since. I worked relentlessly on my craft, night and day, oftentimes neglecting sleep just so I could get the ideas down. I studied different styles of writing, I’ve studied and continue to learn from other writers and I love every single aspect of the craft of writing.

The business side of writing however, the tedious marketing strategy that goes into getting your words out there in front of other people, the networking that is required of a strongly introverted person to do, that is the one aspect that I am not entirely passionate about doing. Throughout the years I have been hardened by the rejection that has come with dealing with the business side of writing, the constant revolving doors of no’s. If it were up to me I would just write and let someone else who’s good at the business part do that side of things.

My passion for making a living with my writing hasn’t weened but I think somewhere along the line the confidence I had in myself as a writer has been battered and bruised a little. The lack of business savvy that I have when it comes to writing has taken the wind out of my sails just a bit. I’ve started to question myself more and more about whether or not I am really good enough and do my words really matter that much. I keep letting the fear of everything that’s not working in my favor influence the drive towards what I know in my heart I’m meant to do and that’s because the confidence I had in the beginning has been damaged. I realize that I have to go back to the beginning, to when I felt sure about my writing.

Now obviously, making a living as a writer there’s no way to get around the business aspect of writing because financially I am not in a place where I can just hire someone else to deal with it and simply write. But I realize that I have to have more creative days where I solely focus on the craft of writing and not how I’m going to get it out there. I still love writing. To be able to write is like being able to breathe to me. I have to return back to what made me really love writing to begin with and I have to nurture that passion. I think that I had gotten so focused on the other stuff that I was starting to lose the part of the craft that fed my soul. I don’t ever want to lose that part of being a writer. Sometimes we have to go back to the beginning of a dream to make sure that we get back on the right path that will enable us to see it through.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

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“Reality isn’t the way you wish things to be, nor the way they appear to be, but the way they actually are.”

~Robert J. Ringer

I am a writer of many things. Fiction of all types, poetry, articles that motivate and uplift, and articles that are meant to inform. No one who writes, unless they particularly write nothing but children’s fairytales, is going to always produce things that are considered motivating and uplifting. Some things that people write are just real. It comes from a place of reality and living in the present moment and in the knowledge of knowing that, as much as we would like it to be true, every moment of people’s lives is not going to always be happy and uplifting and completely void of negative obstacles. That’s just not the reality of things.

So when someone tells me that an article that I wrote to be informative and educate people, who may or may not know certain aspects of a health related disease, is stemming from a place of darkness and negativity it makes me want to literally curse them out and throw something, preferably at them. This particular person would like me to write of nothing but motivating and uplifting things and speak of absolutely nothing that might be negative. That’s not real for me.

For one I don’t consider the article that I wrote, “The Rise of Lung Cancer in Non-smoking women”, to be dark and negative. It simply is meant to inform people on things they may not even know concerning the disease. I was informed just by researching the subject. Secondly, I don’t feel like I have to be placed in this box as a writer of only writing and producing motivational articles. I like to write a little bit of everything but most importantly I like to keep whatever I write (except for fiction) very real.

The funny thing to me is that someone making that type of comment to me appeared and came off as completely negative. As if they were someone just trying to get me riled up and trying to plant seeds of doubt or self consciousness in my mind. It’s almost as if they somehow thought that this would make me just all of a sudden change my style of writing and the things that I put out there for the world to see.

Truthfully it did make me angry but it didn’t deter me from writing my way and on my terms. I write from the heart, whatever way I happen to feel, whatever information I want to convey or educate people with. While I do love when people like what it is that I have written, I write for me first and for the world second. Now maybe that’s wrong in some people’s eyes but if I wrote to try and please everyone else then I may possibly be the one who is not pleased with what I am writing and then I am no longer writing for the sheer love of writing.

My words to the world of writers today is to always stay true to who you are in your writing. Everyone is not going to like what you have to say but the important thing is that you say it, however you want to say it. Write for the moment you are living in and from the place you are coming from. Don’t ever let anyone else dictate what your voice as a writer should be.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

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