I’ve learned that setting intentions at the outset of anything often helps. Before an event, a meeting, a walk in the woods, setting my intention sets the stage for the experience. It guides me when a decision needs to be made or circumstances change. Knowing what I want to get out of a situation informs the actions I take. So, what are my intentions for this summer, this newly-minted singlehood? I’m so glad you asked.
It is the middle of Spring 2023 as I write these words. I am on summer break from school (don’t let that fool you…I’m turning forty-five at the end of this summer), and I want to find out if I even enjoy this thing called writing. Since elementary school, I have written. Journal entries, short stories, a few attempts at larger projects, of which 60,000 words have been thrown around. I have been published once, as a sixth grader, and then received one rejection as a twenty-one year old—I never submitted another piece since. That was twenty-three years ago.
I’ve always said I’m a writer but for many of those years, I only wrote code. A huge part of my identity is being a good writer. I have lost track how often I’ve heard, “Nikki, you’re such a great writer!” or “That email you sent, god, it touched me.” When I am in it, dropped in the center of thoughts and sharing the human condition, oh boy, the world hums. I love those moments.
What I want to find out is if I can continue to love writing when I make a concerted, sustained effort to write shitty first drafts. I want to know if this is something I’m truly any good at. I want to finish the historical fiction novel I’m half-way through with. I want to know if I have the stamina and backbone to be a writer.
Okay, so those are my intentions. Or boiling down to one intention (simplify, simplify, simplify), I want to know if I actually love writing and see a path forward.
How to do this? Well, I think it starts here, on this site. I make myself accountable to write. I put in my time this summer writing. The exact shape of what this looks like, hmmm, I’m still figuring it out. But I know it starts here. It starts writing down my intentions. It starts with having a place to go to, to put words into, to share the joy and pain of being a writer that isn’t really a writer yet. I don’t subscribe to the adage, call yourself a writer and you are a writer. I feel like the title Writer is an earned title, one that requires putting in much more time and many more rejection slips than I have.
Intentions? Check. Website? Check. Loosely defined method of achieving writerhood status? Er, okay, maybe a little work is needed there. But I’ll figure that out, see what takes shape over the next few weeks and months. If nothing else, this site will be a snapshot of the Summer of 2023, where I can save these words in a folder somewhere, remembering when I thought I was a writer. Or, it could be the start of an illustrious writing career, where nikki.lol is heralded across the wide world for poignant, timely, insightful, and incisive words. Who knows what direction I’m headed in?
Let’s see what happens…