I’ve never liked the way I look.

I just didn’t look like the other girls at school. I didn’t have dimples like they did, I didn’t have eyelashes that caught the sunlight, I didn’t have a smile worth being seen. I still don’t. They had mighty confidence, grace, radiance. I had a mighty forehead. I still do.

It wasn’t so much an issue, but my appearance was never something I was proud of. Sure, I wore what I wanted to wear, I didn’t care about make-up (other than my excessive quantity of eyeliner, thick enough that Noah could have just laid it down as carpeting and saved himself an Ark job), I wasn’t bothered about my weight (then) — but I just knew my features weren’t shaped like everybody else’s. …

A dead man walking, they called him,
Then what did that make me?
A corpse, chaotic, dead and gone,
A bride still waiting to be?

He sharpened his knives in danger,
He bathed in fire and glass.
My white dress waiting, now stained in blood,
I waited for a lifetime to pass.

To sleep with the fishes, they threatened,
But even sharks quivered in fear.
At this man of mine, a tsunami of flesh,
I stand by the altar. He’ll be here.

If death is a prize — he’s a winner,
A medallion of madness round his neck.
Crowds not cheering, but on the hunt for his blood,
On my wedding day, man, I was a wreck. …

Em-bellishments

But when is the right time? Spoiler alert: there isn’t one.

That’s it. That’s the end of the post.

“Right” is a subjective term

Unless, of course, you’re navigating a vehicle. And even then your right’s and left’s are defined by your very position. As is the “right time”. It’s defined by you.

And as writers, it is hardwired into our very atoms to avoid writing. We come with writerly radars installed, detecting any potential for productivity and sparking a malfunction right there on the spot. It’s a fear mechanism. A survival instinct and thus, a nuisance. Because this means that no matter how seemingly perfect the set-up, no matter how ideal the environment, no matter how much planning and prepping and pleas to the literary lords above we might partake in — we will always find a way to justify why it just isn’t the right time to write, right now. …

They say that everything happens for a reason. That scar on your finger. That marketing job you were fired from, that cute checkout boy who broke your heart.

And maybe it was. Perhaps that reason is defined by fate or science or three shots of tequila. Maybe it was written in the stars (or the cubicle wall in the nightclub loos).

But often, we use the phrase when trying to justify the darkness that seeps into our life. As though it explains why depression has sprung upon us. As though it accounts for the loss of Aunt June. …

“Come inside, love,” they’d say to her, time and time again. “It’s chilly out, you’ll catch a cold.”

“Then I’ll throw it right back,” she’d reply. They stopped trying to lure her back after three hours.

Though this evening, sometime after twilight, her sister joined her in the fresh night’s air. Tonight they were back-dropped by an entire mountainscape, a campsite crammed with tents and travellers and tiny specks of the universe living as human beings for a while, all cosied up beside campfires and each other and above the winding lake unfolding below them. …

“Tell me about yourself,” my date asked. His jawline was sharp, gaze sharper and so I was blunt.

“I’ve got such trapped wind right now.”

Yeah. Yeah. He’s not my date anymore.

What Am I?

There are so many things I could tell you about myself. That’s true of all of us. So where do we begin? How do we choose? What defines our most notable attributes? What makes certain things more worthy of knowing than others? Where is our value derived?

And that got me thinking. A book is valuable not because of a single page, but because of the entire story woven within. Who we are is infused into every single word, every single moment, every single thought and fingerprint and sweat gland. …

I’m shooting myself in the foot a little here by telling you not to read this (and I love my feet. They’re how I get to the fridge and back). So that’s how you know this is important.

As of 2017, 98% of American adults read for pleasure. 29% read to keep up with current events, 11% for work or school and 2% for other reasons (witchcraft, perhaps). But this is not about those people.

This is about the 45% who read in order to research specific tops of intrigue. Those who read to learn about things that matter to them, to increase their knowledge, enhance their skills, expand their horizons. To better themselves. This is for the ones who read as part of their process in growing as people. Those who live in the library, who have seventeen tabs open at all hours of the day, who have journals full of quotations and reference links and coffee stains because 4am is a time accessed only by those buzzed enough to find it. …

What if we writers spend so much time,
Working on the pages of our book,
Not because there’s plot holes or spellings to correct,
Nor editing our climactic hook.

What if we writers spend so much time,
Thinking about the flow of the tale,
Not because there’s errors or gaps to fill in,
Nor scenes that we think might just fail.

What if we writers spend so much time,
Dreaming about this grande new realm,
Not because it’s barren, or even empty still,
Nor lacking in events to overwhelm.

What if we writers spend so much time,
Wading through each handwritten word,
Not because they’re messy or difficult to get,
Nor using language that’s way too absurd. …