Pursuing Happiness...with writing?

Hello Happiness Project blog! Please excuse the late post. I know it's October now, but I did start writing this post in September, so my topic is still "Pursue your Passion."

Aimee, your post on rekindling your keyboard love was inspiring. 

Unfortunately, my passion for piano far exceeds my (lack of) musical talent, so I did not pursue it.  However, the passion that I pursued for the Happiness Project challenge also involves a keyboard...the one on my laptop.

This month I have committed to writing (er, typing) daily.  I have always seen writing as one of the most powerful forms of expression. Whatever you are feeling, you will feel better if you just write it out. If you're tend to overthink things or be overly emotional like I am, writing can be a huge relief/release. Writing, in some ways, is better therapy than exercise, shopping, even therapy. Growing up, I used to write a lot. Poetry, stories, and a journal that I kept up with almost every day. Given how thrilling and therapeutic I thought writing was, I could never imagine that I'd stop writing outside of school. I was wrong. 

Thanks, college.

There is a theory that even when you study or major in something you love, school makes you fall out of love with it. News and journalistic writing is something I'm passionate about, but it also makes work out of writing. Lately I had been catching up on my non-news reading, and it got me thinking, wishing, wanting. I would read something amazing and think, I want to do that. Or on rare occasions even, "I could do that!"

This semester, however, I decided to pursue my passion for creative writing that had been totally beaten into submission by news scripts and research papers. 

It was scary at first. I struggled with writing about people who don't exist and things that never happened. I felt like I had forgotten how to write fiction, write freely, write for fun. Not only did I worry it wasn't going to be "good," I also was too caught up in the news style of writing: no grammatical errors, making this "concise and conversational", active voice, etc. Once I learned to let go of those rules, I was able to do freewrites, journal entries, poetry, and other writing exercises. Another good thing about taking this creative writing class is that we are exposed to different writing styles and types of literature, so we get a good dose of reading, as well as inspiration to write. 

It's very liberating to not have to analyze or agonize over every word or phrase or piece of punctuation. News writing is very structured and specific, which is fine for its purpose, but the point of creative writing is to have fun, express yourself, use your imagination, etc. And if it's not perfect, that's fine. Call it a first draft. 

As you can tell, this blog entry tends towards a freewrite, and is about as polished as a first draft. And I'm ok with that! Even it's technically non-fiction, blogging definitely counts towards pursuing a passion for writing too.