I blog, therefore I am

Our blog project group has once again changed by one member, but I'm still calling it Blog Project 3.0. The newest member is Darwin Shrugged, a friend of Froggie's. I recently got to know her better through "52 Stories" and I look forward to what she has to say on the upcoming topics.

This week Froggie chose the topic: The essence of you. Write something captures the essence of who you are as a person.

First, read what everyone else had to share on this topic:
Darwin Shrugged
Froggie
Moma Rock

The other day, at work, we were given an activity to do for an inter-office contest. We're supposed to find something we're passionate about in relation to the organization and make a picture of it to put in a special frame they gave us. While what I plan to do for that activity has nothing to do with this post, I was able to relate the two topics initially. Isn't your essence something you're passionate about? I see it that way. In any case, the more I thought about it, the more I knew that writing is what captures my essence.

I've always enjoyed creative writing. Even in elementary school, I enjoyed making up stories. They were probably silly and made no sense at the time, but I had fun, nonetheless. I hated when someone tried to curb my creativity by asking for details. I remember when we had to make up characters for our language arts class. I first created an angel and was told that I had to create a real person. That totally annoyed me because characters should be able to come in any shape or form.

When I started high school, I had to write something based on my summer reading assignment of Tom Sawyer. I didn't like the book all that much, but decided to have fun with it anyway. My English teacher liked it so much that he gave my name to the head of the Forensics (speech) team. From there, I tried my hand at original comedy. Even though my piece didn't do all that well, I had fun putting it together and my English teacher thought I was funny, at least. I also used my creative writing skills in theater classes and for directing class. They later came in handy for when I took improv comedy classes at Comedy Sportz in my mid-20s.

Senior year, I took a creative writing class. It was one of my favorite classes that year. I had so much fun putting together different stories, poems, plays, etc. My teacher even submitted some of my work to contests and entered my play into the literary magazine. Some peers in my directing class even chose my play for their end-of-year directing project. I received more compliments on the play I wrote than the play I directed (that someone else wrote). That was definitely flattering.

In college, I didn't get to explore much on a creative level. I wrote some papers and got away with not knowing what I was talking about, simply by the way I wrote them. One of the papers I had fun working on was comparing Seinfeld to Pulp Fiction. In the meantime, I always had story ideas going through my head but never wrote them down.

Fast forward to 2009, when I started this blog. I had done some blogging in the past, but most of it was venting and dissecting episodes of Desperate Housewives. In 2010, I found this website that had a fiction writing challenge every Friday. I started doing that from time to time and really enjoyed what I came up with. I could tell that other readers liked my writing too, and they didn't even have a reason to be bias! I was also doing book reviews for Chick Lit Central and put a lot of thought into them. I had also started the first blog project group in 2010, which lasted for a little while before fizzling out. When my daughter was born, I curbed the fiction writing for a while. In the meantime, Blog Project 2.0 had started up and I liked the challenging new topics everyone presented. I really like writing my thoughts out on personal topics, as well as pop culture, news stories, ethical dilemmas, etc. There are times when I'm not sure what to say, but then when I get going, it's hard to stop! This past December, after Blog Project 3.0 was underway for a bit, I decided to revisit my fiction writing by making that a topic. It was so nice to go into another person's life for a little while and my short story garnered positive feedback. I made it a goal to write at least one fiction piece for my blog every month in 2014. It keeps my mind active in a different way than I'm used to and allows me to strengthen a skill that had been dormant for quite some time.

Even Chick Lit Central allows me to be creative in different ways, like with my interview questions, theme topics, ideas for posts, etc. I still like to incorporate it into the writing process in some way. This year for International Chick Lit Month, I asked authors to talk about going on a "friend date" with one of their characters. In the past, I've asked authors to do a "where are they now" post about one of their characters. The theme months I've done at the blog have ranged from "Friendship" to "Movies" to "Happiness" to "Birthdays," and there are still more themes in store. I like coming up with various questions based on these themes.

At work, I've made it a tradition to give a D'var Torah (a speech about the most recent parasha/Torah portion) every year on my anniversary with the organization. Since this falls in December, I usually get to talk about Ya'akov (Jacob) or Yosef (Joseph). I get some information from various websites that discuss it and then I find ways to connect them with what my organization does. I was really proud of the one I did this past year, tying the virtues of Menashe and Ephraim to various aspects of fundraising. I received a lot of positive feedback on it too. I hope I'll continue to strengthen my D'var Torah writing skills as the anniversaries continue to build up.

Finally, I've entered a couple of contests for Ladies' Home Journal. I didn't win, but I'm proud of what I wrote for both of them. One piece was about how I met my husband ("The Moment that Changed My Life") and the other was about starting a book blog ("The Best Decision I Ever Made"). I posted both entries on my blog once I knew that I didn't win and they received positive feedback. The latter even led to another opportunity which I hope will come through. (Not saying anything more on that as to not jinx things.) I hope to enter more essay contests in the future and maybe even a fiction contest or two.

Looking back on all these writing experiences tells me that my true essence lies in my writing. I still feel I have a ways to go with it and could always strengthen different aspects of my work (such as adding more details to my fiction pieces). In the long run, I am in charge of what I write and there's no teacher to analyze my work or tell me to do it better. If I want to improve upon something, I will. I'm just glad to be writing and that blogging provides such a great outlet for me to express myself in this fashion.