Righting my writing

Image by Jan Kahánek via Unsplash.

[Currently sipping Jasmine Peony tea from The Jasmine Pearl Company in Portland, OR]

I was a prolific writer in my childhood and throughout adolescence. The impetuses during those various stages of life differed greatly but nevertheless, I wrote.

It likely started with the game I made up as a kid once I was gifted a dictionary. I would flip through it to learn random words and challenge myself to use them correctly at school. Eventually, those words became part of my everyday vocabulary.

Yes, I was the sixth-grader proudly wielding “juxtaposition” in class as if being a word nerd was worthy of pride (Present Minerva stage-whispers to Past Minerva: “It is. You go, girl.”).

I also found refuge in reading and devoured books from my local library, often adventuring through titles that were marked as being beyond my grade level but were really just opportunities to flex my dictionary skills and imagine worlds beyond my experiences as a Chinese-Vietnamese American daughter of refugees living at a very low income level.

Looking at and thinking about words so much were the gateway into writing, and I began with poetry. I rained down upon journals with emotional showers and imaginative language to express how I saw society. I stormed with feelings. I raged and was praised. Somewhere in my parents’ house is an anthology of youth poetry from the county library that included one of my poems among competition winners. I don’t remember the exact work but it was probably angsty.

This itch to write and make meaning of words followed me into young adulthood. I embraced the love hard by majoring in English in college, studying flowery language and filling notebooks with unfinished stories.

But then I lost confidence and in several ways, inspiration.

It happens when you start digging into works you admire. You develop a taste for what is great, and in your frustration to master your art, you pull back. What I wrote was never good enough because I knew what excellence looked like. Sounded like. Felt like.

I also stopped feeling so much all. the. time. Hormones and puberty definitely take your brain for a wild ride.

On top of self-deprecating inner dialogue, I entered the working world where simple language reigned supreme (aka layman’s terms). The words should make customers feel like they’re talking to “real human beings” or at least, people who understood them. My penchant for lofty words would not lead to desired results.

So my style changed. My writing frequency slowed, then ceased. I ceded to doubts and professional requirements.

And I’ve felt like a part of me was missing since.

I shared a smidge of these thoughts on a LinkedIn post not too long ago, along with an homage to the loss:

A litany of literariness once ambushed me on the regular

But since my bodacious emotions have been mollified over time

And a thin-lipped practicality has taken over

Such amusements Muse me no more

And I mourn the usurpation by corporate speak.

At least could I have had a funeral for the passing of literary loquaciousness?

Or a delirious yet deliciously-dictioned dire dirge?

However, the more I’ve considered this lack, the more I’ve realized that reinvigorating the poetic torrents within me is within my control.

A master of words knows when to wield which word for whom and why. I can boil complex ideas down to pithy catchphrases for my white-collar work while also running amok among synecdoches and soliloquies, collarless in the witching hour. Well, maybe earlier in the day because I still need my 7-8 hours of sleep every night…

And so it’s time to right my writing.