📖Turn the Page📖

{ I just want to acknowledge that this SHOULD have gone out yesterday, but we are being held hostage by a foot of snow which is under an inch of ice. Life is a little wacky this week. Thank you for understanding!}

Hi Reader,

I sat next to him as his eyes drooped, drool formed at the corners of his mouth, and his body slumped in the chair.

Our instructor looked at me, with a face that said, SERIOUSLY??

I shrugged and poked him. He sat up, alarmed, eyes wide.

I took a creative writing class in the fall semester of my sophomore year. It became an anchor during a rough time in my 19 year old life—the first break up that truly shook me.

My boyfriend at the time (you know the first love kind) was pledging a fraternity. Sleeping in class was just one of the totally awesome side effects. Our unraveling relationship was another.

We had decided to take the class together—I was (a 19-year-old hopeless romantic) probably dreaming of all the love notes we’d write. (LOL. Hindsight amiright?)

Our instructor was young and inspired something in me I desperately needed at the time—permission to FEEL my huge range of feelings through my writing.

And while this was something writing had always offered in me small ways, it came roaring back as the months grew colder in the year 2000 (yes, folks, I just typed that. I went to college with no cell phone and no real computer of my own. 😳)

It’s true that this space served an incredible purpose in my life that year. But something else also slowly happened—I drifted further and further towards this (silly and really limiting) belief:

“My writing is only for me.”

Raise your hand { subscriber.first_name }} if you hold even an ounce of these beliefs:

That you like or even love writing, but would never (GASP) actually show it to anyone
That you know deep down that your writing is really good, but have never considered you could be paid for it
That getting paid (well) to write is only possible if you’ve walked a “specific path” or went to “journalism school” (I came so close to going to journalism school and then went to Mexico to work at Club Med instead. A story for another day, lol)

These ideas sat so squarely in my belief vault that I never even considered trying to put myself out there as a “Writer.”

Even though I knew I was good at it.

Even though people had always told me how impactful my words were.

What I didn’t realize then is that truly, if you spend time writing…

YOU ARE A WRITER.

If you enjoy explaining things in written words, love figuring out how to construct the clearest, cleverest, or simplest way to say the thing you need or want to say, you are already primed for this work.

And there are companies that will be excited to pay you (quite well) to use that skill + your knowledge and experience about teaching to write for them.

That creative writing class (although coinciding with a difficult time in my life) has such a soft spot in my heart that I still have THE RATTY 26 YEAR OLD BLUE FOLDER WITH PRINTED OUT COPIES (AND THE “DISK,” LOL I’M SO OLD.) OF WORK I CREATED DURING THAT SEMESTER.

THIS WAS A REAL WAY TO SAVE YOUR WORK (IFKYK)

If any of this sounds or feels familiar (not the floppy disk let’s be real), know that writing isn’t this murky, “certification-needed” career path.

It can be a “decision, followed by some learning, practice and guts” type of thing.

In fact when I finally shook myself loose of the “no one would pay for me that” mindset, I committed to opening my computer and writing for 15 minutes a day.

Some days I stared at the blinking cursor for 14 of those minutes. Other days, I felt like the words poured out of me. But the point was…

I got myself over that hump by turning off the voice that said I couldn’t and just doing the damn thing.

Just actually working on it.

And you know what? It worked.

I remembered that I was entirely capable.

Those 15 minutes really mattered on this journey. Even on the difficult days.

Especially on the difficult days.

Interest piqued?

Reply and I’ll send you bits of my sad 25-year old heartbreak poetry.

(JK. I would never subject anyone to that.)

Seriously, hit reply and tell me—have you ever wanted to try writing as your work?

Stay tuned…it’s going to heat up around here in the next few weeks—with the best info about how to take some steps in the direction of something new.

Stay warm out there 🥶,

Meredith