Practicing Passionate Priorities to Perceive a Perfect Profession

Alliteration aside, this post is about my passion for writing.  Growing up I used to write a lot.  My favorite units in school were the creative writing units.  I loved making up stories.  I loved creating a different world and bringing characters into it.  It was almost like I was escaping into that world as well.  I was even able to do quite a bit of creative writing through college.  But then I graduated and got a job teaching and suddenly I lacked the time to do any real writing.  I started a few things my first couple years, but I was never able to get very far with any of those stories.  And eventually I just stopped writing altogether.

Part of the reason why I started this blog was to inject some more passion in my life.  When you love something, that love never really goes away, even if the thing does.  The more I've written for this blog, the more I realize how much I love writing.  And even though most of what I write is non-fiction, the creative juices have started to flow in full force.  Creative story ideas have popping in my head like crazy.  And I've been trying like crazy to flush them out and get them written.

In fact, this weekend I took a trip into my past to stoke the fire.  I turned off my phone and the TV, put on the soundtrack to The Rock and went at it.  This was my approach in high school and it used to work wonders.  This time, however, was met with mixed results.  While I was able to get quite a bit written, I found myself getting stuck often.  What I realized is that I am out of practice.  Writing, like any other skill, takes practice.  Allen Iverson might disagree, but you have to work at it to be good, and I haven't done much work.  Sure I've written a lot for my blog, but it hasn't really been creative fiction.  I haven't created characters and worlds and feelings.  I'm rusty.

But the passion is there.  I feel alive when I write.  I want to do more of it.  And I need more practice.  Part of that means working with other writers, something I've never done before.  But I need feedback and help getting my craft back up to par.  If any of you want to read and critique what I'm working on, please let me know.  Hopefully, with any luck, I can find a way to write more and write more purposefully.  Until then, I will just keep practicing.