(I wrote this in 2014, after a writer's conference in Boston. These were 2 posts on my old blog, Internally Decapitated, which I decided at some dumb moment to "permanently delete"... the page is still there, but I can't edit or post, so I started this one.... I thought it would be helpful (to me or you, I don't know) to repost these posts on my new blog. (Plus, my new posts won't be so lonely!).)

 So far, I've talked about being a survivor of traumatic body and brain injury. Did you know the reason I started this blog is because I'm a writer dying for an outlet and an audience? More than that, it gives me a consistent topic to write about and a sort of direction I find hard to find the self-discipline to maintain on my own. But, really I'm a writer. And I officially know that I don't want to be known as a disabled writer, but a writer who happens to be disabled. I don't want to be force-genre'd simply because my first recognized writing happens to be about or involves in some way someone with a disability.
Right now, I'm in Boston and an AWP conference. I'm with 12,000+ people who also call themselves writers, artists, creators. It's been a major struggle for me, physically. It sucks.
I got here Tuesday afternoon. My aunt, a published novelist and successful freelancer, Patti Frazee, met me here. Wednesday we went out sightseeing -- I've NEVER been to New England before, and I've been dying to see Boston for 20 years. Last year, the AWP conference was in Chicago, and that was the first time Patti got to introduce me to her world. Last year, we didn't have time to see the city. This year, I came Tuesday thinking the conference started Wednesday, so I was so stoked when I realized it started Thursday and we had all day Wednesday to sightsee. Patti lived in Massachusetts after college, as well as NYC, plus she's visited here in the past, so she had some ideas to build our experience together here on the east coast. I think she enjoyed the fact that it was my first time here and that she was the one that got to show me around, and to be honest, Patti is someone who I have a certain bond with, she understands me a way that others don't, she's allowed me to fuck up and make mistakes without giving up on me, she's one of few people that I know had the highest hopes, and she even maybe had faith, that I would get my shit together, clean up, and start writing or at least doing something to try to meet my potential. Last year, Patti introduced me to a friend of hers at the conference, and she mentioned that I was a poet, "a good poet, like really good." Last year, she gave me the confidence to start calling myself a writer.
Tonight, I went to a reading by Jeanette Winterson and was blown away, inspired, speachless, crying, laughing, connecting, you got it.... I may have my first writer crush! She said so many amazing things, one of them being that she didn't become a writer, or learn to write, she just was one. That's me. I'm not published, other than in social media and that doesn't count! At the same time, I'm also unsubmitted, I've never tried to get published. All of my poetry is still in journals all over the place. She made me believe that it's my everything to write, I've been writing since I was 4 years old. I'm a writer, whether you've read or heard my work or not. I'm a writer, and no one can take that away from me.
(2nd post)

In a cathartic moment immediately after finishing, Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal, by Jeanette Winterson, I realized today that there has been one consistent element missing from my writing, especially about the accident.  Except in my poetry.... there I can use imagery to bring out the feelings, the torment, the anguish, even the happiness and comfort. I had many, many self-realizations and moments of complete emotional clarity, simultaneously not feeling alone, - though I was with what some people would call just a book (there's really no such thing as "just a book") - while reading this emotional masterpiece that reads like the smoothest poetry and embedded with emotional horror and self-understanding.  JW made me see that the thing missing, and I'm sure you'll agree if you go back and read/reread previous entries, is showing my reader the emotion.  Not just saying, it was scary or I was sad, but reinventing that emotion to bring you as close to  me at that moment and humanly possible without physically being there.
I also realized that the past is the present is the future and that you can move any of those nouns to change the progression of time and the sentiment remains the same.  I've learned that we don't have a right to happiness, we have the right to the pursuit of happiness and these are by no means even close to meaning the same thing.  We believe we have this right because our forefathers said so.  Happiness, like all emotions, are fleeting and, especially good feelings, don't last long.  The pursuit of happiness is forever.  We have the right, as Americans, to pursue happiness our entire lives.
When I heard JW read in Boston at AWP in 2014, it changed my life, my self-appreciation, and hopefully my writing (for the better) and success as a human being.  She made a comment that at one point in her life she was suicidal.  It didn't work, thankfully. She decided then that she was sick of living half a life.  She also said, "...life is trauma..." and when I met her to sign my book I had to thank her for that.  I've been living half a life for a long time, especially the last 6 years.  I don't feel good every day.  I don't want to get out of my PJ's most days.  Most days I want to sleep, and if I can't I immediately turn on the tv and plop down on the couch.  The ass imprint where I sit is bigger than I'd like it to be, if I'm going to leave an ass imprint on anything, and it's still there when I get out of bed after 12 hours, or sometimes 3 days.  This isn't working for me.  I can't live half of a life anymore.  And I especially cannot continue to not write, not try to get published.  Maybe the talent is so much here in my blog, it'll come.  I'm a poet, and poets are a very different breed than a literary writer (stress on literary).
I found last week that novels are probably not the way for me to go, as well.  There are so many rad short versions of writing -- I'd never considered an essay before, but I don't want to always write with a setting, developed characters, plot, climax, etc. I like to write about what's twirling around in my brain, or maybe it's my soul? There's also flash fiction and experimental, and so many other things I can write.  The intimidation of the length of a novel has steered me clear for 20 years.  Yes, 20.  I wrote my first poem at the age of like 4, and my short story won some kind of award in elementary school.  People have always told me I should write.  They're right, I should.  I just shouldn't be writing what I do (other than poetry) the way I do (even some of my poetry).
Thanks for reading, all comments welcome