Monday 27 April 2015

How Writing Has Positively Influenced My Life


From past blogs many of you know me, or rather my style of writing.  I’ve been bitten by the power of positivity and I want to infect the world with it one blog post/romance at a time. 

With that in mind, I recently came across an interesting contest hosted by the Positive Writer blog.  Blogger Bryan Hutchinson is asking writers with blogs how has “writing positively influenced your life?”   This got me thinking.

Image courtesy of Positive Writer blog at http://positivewriter.com 

Writing has been an amazingly positive influence in my life.  It’s been a life-changer.  I know it’s probably hard to imagine but I used to be a very shy, reclusive woman.  (Yeah, I’m sure that probably surprises most of you—LOL—but it’s true.)  I had a Walter Mitty type personality. 
I never went anywhere or did anything because I was just too frightened to break out of my shell, but inside my head I had the most extraordinary life.  I had adventures every day and I was the heroine in every one of them.  I saved children from burning buildings, dodging falling beams and leaping gaping holes in third-storey floors, to carry them (there were always at least two-often twins) to the grateful arms of their mother. Then, of course, I braved the inferno again to save the family dog.  As a plain-faced, quietly ingenious lab assistant I invented a vaccine to cure flesh-eating zombies, saving the world from an unthinkable apocalypse after the WHO (World Health Organisation) inadvertently infected the population with a faulty flu vac.  Oprah Winfrey herself interviewed me about the influential novel I wrote about ordinary people doing extraordinary things.  She cried.  I cried.  The world cheered.  

I helped people.  I was important.

…I was living an imaginary life.  While that was an okay existence to my otherwise lacklustre life, it was also a bit demoralising when I woke up from my daydreams.

Then my husband, of all people, encouraged me to write my daydreams down.  “Write them.  Get them out of your head.  Share them,” he said.  So, I did.  Granted, it’s taken a lot to get those stories on paper and do them justice, but writing them down has been the impetus to actually living my dreams.

 No longer am I Walter Mitty, stuck inside my head!  I’m my own heroine in REAL life.  I am living my adventure.  Every day I write I am the heroine of my own story, of my life.  Yeah, now I tend to live the same adventure over and over (somewhat ad nauseam—LOL) until I get to THE END, but wow!  What a life to live—the adventure of being a writer who writes

I may not yet be published, but I’m living my dream and I’m sometimes a heroine to others who may still be struggling to live their dreams. In so doing I help people.  I’m important.  I’m a writer.

Writing has positively influenced my life.  How has it positively influenced yours?  Even if you’re not a writer, how has the writing of others influenced you?  (This last is an important question needing responses because I know I’m not the only writer who hopes to influence the world in positive ways.  If a writer has positively impacted you, let us know.  Let the world know!  "Write them. Get them out of your head.  Share them.")

I love to love...my husband; he inspires me to be all I can be!
I love to laugh...at myself; it's pretty easy to do (and sure beats crying)!
I love to learn...from my daydreams; in them I discover the greatness that I'm capable of.

Positive Writer blog master, Bryan Hutchinson, has compiled 50 articles on positivity into a book, The Audacity to be a Writer.  If you need inspiration, buy a copy now.  



41 comments:

  1. Really great post, Dee! Writing has certainly had a positive influence on my life. I seized on a childhood dream and passion, took a chance, and turned it into reality. How cool is that? And the friends I've made... Wow. That part of it is amazing.

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    1. Thank you Cathryn Hein! So great to have you here, especially given that you must be busy promoting your newest release The Falls (http://www.cathrynhein.com/falls/)!

      So many of us had dreams to become writers but only a few have taken hold of it with the tenacity (and generosity) that you have! I'm grateful that you took that chance! I love your books!

      Writing gave you the push to live your dreams and has helped you find new and awesome friends! That is soooo cool!!!

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  2. I think everyone has a writer hidden inside them, and to some extent we're all 'Walter Mitty's'! I love the fact that writing can take us to rich and wonderful worlds - and you can share that with people. Reading does the same thing. Lucky us.

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    1. Malvina, you are so right...there is a writer hidden in all of us! I love the fact that people take the chance to write down what's inside them...even some of the grizzly stories like Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Perfume by Patrick Suskind, Stephen King's anything, Patricia Cornwell books (not genres/books I normally read)...they challenge me, make me think, and grow. If those writers hadn't taken a chance (some had to take quite a few chances), then I wouldn't have been the me or the writer that I am today.

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  3. Wonderful post, Dee. I'm sure many who know me now (and know just how outspoken I can be!) would find it hard to believe that I, too, was once shy. Yes, from early childhood through to the end of high school I was the one who hid in the back of the crowd, sat silent at the back of the classroom lost in my own imaginative world. It was meeting other writers that released the shyness from me. I could talk to them about writing, people who became my friends, and I could bring the stories in my head into life on paper. A very liberating and 'positive' experience that I cherish.

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    1. So writing helped you open up and meet new people. Were you like me...did you think that perhaps there was something wrong with your imagination? I thought I had a way too active imaginary life. I thought I was...broken. Then I met Breathless...and wow--I realised that I wasn't broken; I was whole...more than whole--I had so much that I just needed to share it! I finally realised that my imagination wasn't a bad thing. It was just the start of something wonderful...somethings wonderful!

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    2. Did think my imagination was way too real. Kept silent about it as no one else I knew when young talked of stuff like that but I kept on imagining and liked it.

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    3. And so glad you did! You have an amazing writing voice...one that should be heard and shared!

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  4. I love this post! I think most writers (not all) are introverts and therefore not really into being the center of attention. However, I know through being with my writing group and taking on a meeting here and there that my confidence in speaking in front of others has improved. As I've gained more experience with my writing and the business of writing I am able to share my knowledge more freely with others and hope that I am "Paying it forward" as other writers did for me.

    Reading Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen definitely influenced me as a teen and I went from there to discover Loretta Chase, Julia Quinn, Johanna Lindsey, Anne Gracie and Stephanie Laurens who positively influenced me in such a way that I fought for my dreams of being an author and won. Not without the help and guidance of many, many other authors and friends along the way though. I am grateful to all of them.

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    1. So glad you DID fight for your dreams of authoring romances Cassandra Samuels! I love The Wager and know so many others who love it too!

      What awesome role models you had along the way...Jane Austen, Loretta Chase, Julia Quinn, Johanna Lindsay, and the awesome Aussies--Anne Gracie and Loretta Chase!

      I love that you 'pay the positivity forward.' I think that's an important aspect of living our dreams and living positively, as writers and as human beings. As individuals we take the initial chance to write but for most of us there are many people helping us along the way to achieving our dreams, directly and indirectly. When we finally achieve those dreams, it's not quite complete if you don't repay that help in some way IMNSHO.

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    2. I'm always looking at life positively. Sharing what I know to pay that positivity forward Is a natural thing for me. That's why I was ecstatic to be part of the team forming RWA. And I love watching the association evolve and writers get published. Helps me my own dream of publication alive.

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    3. Awesome Enisa Haines! I'm so glad you did share your knowledge, time, and talents; RWA has helped me and others in so many ways! Thank you.

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  5. Family aside, my greatest pleasures are writing and reading. I can't remember a time when I haven't relied on one or both of them to take me to another world for a short time to vicariously experience the world through someone else's eyes. Don't get me wrong - I love my life - but it's also fun to let my imagination loose and follow wherever it leads.
    An entertaining post, Dee. Thank you.

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    1. Thank you Marilyn Forsyth! You make a salient point...writing and reading take us to places we'd never go (Paris, Istanbul, outer space, the future, the past, etc...). I think in living vicariously we come to appreciate our own lives even more. I know when I read a book about a heroine who struggles just to live her fictional dreams that my struggles-even though real-don't look so hard.

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  6. How strange, Dee, I was just thinking of a book this morning that changed me - at a very tender age I made the conscious decision I wanted to be like this person. The book was "Pollyanna" by Eleanor H Porter about an orphan girl who contrives to play "The Glad Game" in her daily life, in other words, she always looked on the bright side of life. Very saccharine, I know, but even to this day, it's how I prefer to live my life.

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    1. I absolutely adored Pollyanna as a kid! What a fantastic fictional role model Marie Miller! And a powerful way to have your life influenced by a book. I love how the townspeople that Pollyanna helped came to help her when she was hit by the car...I don't think I'd ever felt so terribly happy at one time...terrible because Pollyanna couldn't walk but profoundly happy that the people rallied around her and helped to find her positivity again. I can see how Pollyanna was a truly positive influence for you and for others!

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    2. Marie Miller! I thought about you today...I just read Sarah Morgan's Playing By the Greek's Rules. The heroine has a Pollyanna style outlook on life that made me fall in love with her as a character. (Funny...both Pollyanna and this heroine were a bit too sunny at the start of the book but by the end I loved them!)

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  7. Fantastic post Dee. Reading and writing have always had a positive influence in my life. I was sick a few years back and writing gave me something to focus on rather than the illness. To say that writing saved my life is probably a stretch, that was pretty much down to the medical staff & drugs but I believe it certainly helped. :)

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    1. Wow! What an awesome way to deal with a negative situation! Your illness may have been awful (and it sounds like it was--sorry to hear that) but you turned it into something manageable and how well you managed, having now authored how many books? For those that haven't heard, Nicole Hurley-Moore released her latest last week McKellan's Run. Check it out at http://www.amazon.com.au/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_10?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=nicole+hurley-moore&sprefix=nicole+hur%2Caps%2C282.

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    2. Thank YOU Nicole Hurley-Moore!

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  8. I enjoyed reading your post, Dee. Writing has put a positive slant on my life, because it's taught me that I can. I can't do that was my catch cry. Not anymore. I can do whatever I set my mind to. I can apply the skills I have learned from taking writing courses, attending lectures, to my story to make it better, stronger. Make my characters breathe, live, love. I can finish the book, the edits, the rewrites. I can because I have made so many friends while on this journey that have encouraged me to keep striving. I am grateful for all the positive ways writing has influenced my growth, not only as a writer but as the woman I have always wanted to be.

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    1. Awesome Rosie Miles! Simply awesome! I love it--you've built a 'can do' attitude from writing and even applied it to life.

      Isn't it amazing all the friends you make writing!? I think everyone has mentioned that writing has opened them up to new friends. Must be the positive attracting the positive!

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  9. So many inspiring stories! It seems you've touched a nerve, Dee :)
    Me, I'm like you - an introvert who's discovered how to be an extrovert (occasionally) through writing.
    Further, it is no exaggeration to say 'writing has made me more me'. It has been a pressure-cooker for my mental stew, been a greenhouse for making me grow, and has painted the world about me in vivid, rainbow colours.

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    1. Wow, Venetia Green! So beautifully stated! I love that writing "made you more you!"

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  10. Thanks for sharing, Dee. Reading has been such a big part of my life and now I get to be a writer and hopefully can contribute something for the next generation to escape in as I did (and still do!)

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    1. Thank you Rowena Candlish! Writing/Reading is an escape, isn't it!? Sometimes even more...I know if I can escape into the pages of a book, I can 'get away' from my own world and my own problems for just a while. I guess that makes it more than just an escape, doesn't it? I mean it's a tension reliever, stress reducer, life enhancer!

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  11. Great post Dee. Writing has definitely changed my life - and all within the last year. In Jan 2014, I had a whole week to myself. No work, no child, and no commitments... and I got BORED. So I picked up pen and paper and wrote my first fiction sentence since high school... and I couldn't stop. One year later, I decided to take a crazy chance (not my usual style at all) and submit my Gay M/M Romance to Dreamspinner Press. Amazingly, they liked it and will be publishing it very soon!!!! Now each night, instead of watching TV re-runs I am writing, editing, choosing book cover preferences, setting up social media sites and links (HELP) and having the time of my life.
    Writing has changed my life forever - and I love it!

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    1. LOL I love that you had down time...and got bored! (Soooo been there myself!)

      Awesome! I got all goose-pimply reading how writing has positively influenced your life! I hope you'll come back to the Breathless blog and let us know when your book is released and where we can purchase it! Congratulations and well done on taking a chance and making it happen CM Corett!

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  12. Fabulous post, Dee! Writing is such an intrinsic part of who I am I honestly don't know who I would be without it - and I would be super sad because it would never have given me the chance to meet so many wonderful writers and readers. As a kid I wrote stories ALL THE TIME but becoming a teenager and in my twenties I lost that part of me and, now I look back on it, I felt lost a lot of the time. I just had an epiphany! See how influential your writing is, Dee? I didn't realise the reason I felt so lost as a teenager and in my twenties was because i wasn't writing! I took up writing again in my thirties and that's when my life totally changed - a whole new (wonderful) world opened up to me and I am forever grateful. Thanks for such a lovely post, Dee and thanks for helping me find that epiphany I didn't see coming!

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    1. OMG! Alli Sinclair, author of Luna Tango! Squeeee!!! So nice to have you on the Breathless blog!

      LOL I love that my blog has positively influenced you! Epiphanies are awesome!!!

      From the responses, so many of us have felt adrift--lost--before we took up the pen (or in some cases took it up again). Amazing how writing makes us feel whole, and as Venetia Green stated "more" ourselves.

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  13. IF THERE'S ANYONE OUT THERE AFRAID TO OPEN UP AND LEAVE A COMMENT ABOUT HOW WRITING HAS POSITIVELY INFLUENCED YOU...

    I know it may be daunting (boy, do I know it can be daunting!) to open up and share a bit of yourself but it can also be liberating! Can you feel the support here on this blog?! It's awesome!!

    I would love to hear how writing has positively influenced you. Click into the comments and let us all know!!!

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  14. Hi Dee! Writing has been a very positive influence on my life as well and I wrote about it for Bryan's blog, too. Please check it out.

    I Used to be much more open minded and more of an extrovert in my life previous to writing though. Now I am more shy and introverted. I guess it is this writing thing. I am afraid to show or submit my writing and am afraid of rejection. Ya Know?

    But really this post is an inspiration for anyone to go on write down stuff. Any stuff. Like what I say. Reap what you sow. My journal writing has given me published works that without journaling I would never have gotten. And it can happen to anyone. All you have to do is write. :)

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    1. Hi, Clara! I visited your blog (and left a comment!). Wow--writing truly has been a positive influence in your life! Sounds like it's helped you through a lot of ups and downs.

      How interesting that you used to be an extrovert but writing has pushed you toward being more introverted. I understand that. I recently read a blog post on the Positive Writer blog (http://positivewriter.com) by guest blogger, Marcy McKay, about not letting others sabotage your writing. She suggests that a writer needs to be careful who they show their work to, but to get published we still have to show our work at some point and it's such a scary prospect, isn't it...baring our creative souls to the world?

      I see that you've bared your soul before though. Your children's books look absolutely wonderful! For those that may not know, Clara Bowman Jahn has written two kids' books, Annie's Special Day (http://www.amazon.com.au/Annies-Special-Day-Clara-Bowman-Jahn-ebook/dp/B00CB4R0HY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1430290682&sr=8-1&keywords=annies+special+day) and Edmund's Pickle Chin (http://www.amazon.com.au/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=edmund+pickle+chin).

      Thanks for sharing how writing has positively influenced your life on the Breathless in the Bush blog!

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    2. Dee,

      Thanks so much for visiting my blog and leaving a comment and spreading the word about my books. This means so much to me. I really feel supported in the writing community and that is one thing I did not mention in my blog. The writing community is awesome and you just proved it.

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    3. I do love that about the writing community...they-we-are very supportive. That support makes the often lonely job of writing so much better!

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    1. Hi, Dumi Soft! Thank you for stopping by the Breathless blog and being so positive in your comment!! You made my day. (Just goes to show...even a short positively written statement can make a difference!)

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