It's kind of weird, this drive and urge I've had towards nonfiction lately. I used to think I was never going to be one of those people who enjoyed non-fiction. I only ever read and wrote fiction, because non-fiction was boring, right?
Maybe it’s just an age thing…but suddenly when I hit the age of thirty-two, piles and piles of non-fiction kept making its way to my TBR list. And then I discovered Substack. And then, I began to miss my old blogs, and I started to think, “I could write non-fiction on Substack. Sure. I could totally do that, right?”
If I listen to the deep-down voices, the ones that always seem to want to keep me from writing, they'll tell me I'm presumptuous. Who am I to write things about my life? What kind of life have I lived, anyway? It's a boring one. I've been on the earth for thirty-four years now. A bookish homeschooled nerd who got married early, had kids early, and is now homeschooling them. My focus is my faith, my husband, my kids, my friends, my weird made-up worlds with elves and dragons, my books, my gardening and baking, my games, keeping my house somewhat in order. I haven't done anything noteworthy or special. I live a mundane life that I try to keep peaceful and loving.
And if I turn from those voices, it's other voices telling me that I just want to do this because I want people to know who I am. Like I have some kind of dream of being a household name or, heck, even to have an audience the same size as my favorite streamer, the one who plays ghosthunting games while a couple of hundred people watch and chat. Like I have a voice people want to listen to.
Now that one--and I'm getting a bit brave here, talking about my flaws on the internet--that one might have a bit of truth. Ever since I was a child I wanted to be thought of as a smart person, as someone who is listened to, as someone who speaks and the room goes quiet to hear. One of my biggest insecurities as a person is the sneaking suspicion that no one is listening, and even if they do catch a word here or there, they think you're stupid and your words are less than meaningless. It's that insecurity that seems to nag at me, especially as I've been trying to do this writing thing as a career and seem to have spent most of the time spinning my wheels in obscurity.
(Isn't it funny, the voices whisper, that you once thought people would care enough about your writing that they'd pay? Isn't it funny that you once thought you'd make enough to live off of?)
And then there's that word: brave. Writing is hard work. Writing is tearing open your soul and sharing it with the world--if you're brave enough. And I'm not. My friends read my work and tell me, You need more emotion here. Really make me feel this. And I'd like to, I truly would, it's just that that means tapping into my own emotions and trying to really show people my feelings, and that? That's dangerous, and scary, because I don't trust just anyone with that (I can count four people off the top of my head who I'm not afraid to show my real emotions to), and here you're wanting me to show that off to strangers?
All these voices of insecurity eat and eat and eat and sometimes it feels like they've eaten so much that I'm a hollowed out shell, only full of fingernails worried to the quick and stress-thinned hair and the nagging itch that tells me no one cares.
And it's weird that I think that, because I know that's not true.
Above all, there's my faith, right? And my faith tells me there's a God who cares and listens to me more than any other earthly person could. And then there's my husband and my kids and my friends and my extended family, who listen and care. Of course I have a voice with them. And my life might not be as adventurous as my characters' lives, but it's still lovely and full of warmth and laughter and peace and stillness and busyness and all the other things I treasure. And even if my life hasn't been glamorous or exciting, why should that exclude me from sharing my thoughts? I can still contemplate truth and beauty. I can still talk about my struggles between technology and creativity.
I believe everyone has something to offer in a conversation. (With caveats, obviously, but I don't think it's necessary to go into that negativity here.) If I believe that, truly believe that, then why don't I give myself that same grace?
So then we arrive back at the same place. Circle to the beginning of the conversation. It's weird that, given all these insecurities and hang-ups I've just spent the last five hundred words nattering on about, that I want to write nonfiction. But I do. I have thirty-four years of half-formed thoughts that are battering at my brain, wanting out. Sometimes they emerge in fiction, but sometimes its about things that are hard to talk about in fiction. Or directly so, anyway. And I've always been a verbal (or written, in this case, I suppose) processor. I'm never really sure what I actually think about a topic until I talk it out, or write it out. (I'd prefer to always write it out, because I sound much smarter when I have a chance to write. My verbal processing resembles a kid's messy room--you have to get in there and sort the blocks and the Legos from the socks and the dinosaur toys before any of it starts to make sense.)
And so I arrive here. Wanting to write. Because I think thoughts--sometimes when I should be doing other things, like paying attention to that pot of chai I have simmering on the back of the stove before the milk boils over. (I failed in that today.) And I want to share those thoughts--not, I hope and pray and fight against the inclination, for the sake of being heard by many and thought the smartest in the room--but because I like processing this way, and maybe sparking conversation, and maybe fostering a bit of that community that the world feels oh-so-lacking in these days. To be brave, and maybe let it seep into my fiction a little bit too.
And thus, this Substack. I'm curious to see where it goes.