I’m very excited to be writing some blogs for businesses who want to use articles to boost their search engine optimization and to tell their stories the old-fashioned way: in words. Writing has always been a huge part of my life, even though I haven’t shared much of it for the past five years. My writing has been reduced to copy for social media posts, emails, and the endless stream of texts. While I do enjoy composing short and punchy captions, I think that there is something truly valuable about longer form compositions. When we read even just a few paragraphs, we are able to take a quick journey, to fall under the spell of a voice. It’s this hypnotic trance-like feeling that I missed and I’m super happy to be taking it up again. I’ve written a few blogs here and there over the years, but nothing consistently enough to really build anything. This is another moment of focusing my intentions to make it happen.

It can be a little like an addict promising to quit their habits, but while it might be a little hard to believe, the process of trying is key to actually eventually succeeding. There are of course many distractions, many trips off of the path, some digressions for a view, some painful tumbles down the hill, but if you want to do something eventually you make it part of your life. That’s what this is: it’s the start of me making writing for the public a part of my life. Doing some writing professionally is gratifying, because it reminds me of that feeling of completing something that is going to be published. Putting your words out into the world.

The frustrating part of working on writing with other people is that you go back and forth so many times that it starts to feel like someone else’s writing. There is little sense of ownership. This doesn’t happen with photography. You send people photos and they choose the ones they like. They don’t send them back with weird little things photoshopped in. They don’t have feedback or suggestions for you. This makes photography an easier process in a lot of ways. People don’t think that they can make any changes, so they don’t ask for them.

With writing, even people who can’t put together a grammatical sentence think that they need to give you some kind of feedback. Editors, collaborators, critics all want to put their two cents in and you have to be open to the process. That’s one huge thing that you have to accept: it’s not for you, so it’s going to have lots of stuff you wouldn’t choose. It becomes your job to navigate the process of drafting and accepting revisions and trying to make the final piece as good as you possibly can. Whoever has the final authority may make changes that you entirely disagree with. They may make statements that you find to be clumsy and unsupportable. It’s not up to you, though, so you have to accept their decision.

This is also what makes me want to write my own blog much more consistently. I know that when I write without that kind of feedback I create much better prose. I want to give you something to dig your teeth into, something to savor and to enjoy for a few minutes. I don’t want to hit you over the head with sales requests or jargon. I do plan to write some blogs that will give you creative prompts, but I also just want to start a dialogue with you readers out there in the world.

Have you ever had this experience of writing in collaboration? The same thing can happen with video. Sometimes a collaborator can improve the final product, too, though. It’s good to be humble and remain open to feedback, but it’s a tricky thing. Often times another person will read what you have written in a way you can’t and that’s valuable for sure.