Searching for Direction and Purpose

For someone who writes all the time, I feel like the loose end of a rope in hurricane winds. I’m just flopping around going every which way. I’m very passionate about my writing, but my topics are all over the place. I can’t seem to find one clear direction or purpose. It bothers me because how can I ever develop a solid audience if I’m not focused.

I am ruled by my emotions and most of my writing comes from whatever emotion is stirring me at the moment. Today might be something I read that ignites the spark in my mind, tomorrow could be about gardening or an adventure I go on (even if it’s something that strikes me while running errands), and the day after that, my mind could be on fire writing about a comment someone made.

If I can’t feel what I’m writing, the words and stories mean nothing to me. Even the news articles I write for the paper or a magazine must stir my emotions and be a subject of interests. 

I have to admit that I purposely work emotionally. That’s what fuels my passion to write. I take topics and explore them with words and feelings. I consider hows and whys. But the issue comes down to publishing. How can I write more books when I operate with a lack of specific purpose?

I wrote “Too Cold for Alligators” and when it was time to publish, I had to choose a category. It was disheartening to realize that how and what I write does not fit into one category. And yet, it’s very exciting to me to write this way. I don’t want to be put in a box. I want to add poems, pictures, segments of history, maps, and such to my stories. Why does that have to be a no, no?

I wrote the second travel book – well, partly travel, but including the above parts, too. And this is where I… fumbled. I don’t want to spend the hundreds of dollars to have the book not be successful. I put it in the travel category and travel readers are disappointed because it’s not a normal travel-writing book. If I mention poetry then people who don’t like poetry won’t read it. I can’t refer to self-help because I won’t tell people what to do (if something in my story stirs them in a direction or helps them deal with a situation then I’ve done my job). 

I can’t even fully explain why and how I’m road blocked – because I absolutely refuse to do what every other author does. Am I a failure? No, I’m sticking up for what I believe. I’m sticking up for me! I am not a cookie-cutter writer.

I continue to journal daily and I write an occasional blog. I write emails to friends and I write some stories for the newspaper. I have thousands of pages of various other writings that mean something. My mind has been stuck on how to organize it all into cohesive subjects to put together books. I remain stuck. The task is daunting.

There is something within me that is driven, though. I feel pushed to make this happen. I 100 percent believe my writing serves a purpose. I may not be able to state exactly what that purpose is, but the desire to do it pulls me apart because I’m not getting it all together. I have hard copies of some filed in various folders. There are hundreds of writings in various places on the computer. And I’m writing new things.

Last night’s reading of “The Courage to Create” by Doreen Virtue stirred something within. She wrote, “You can’t water down your original idea to make it conform to normal.” I’ve never been “normal.” I’ve never wanted to do exactly what everyone else was doing (and maybe why I had few friends in school). For me, to “water down” my creativity to be “normal,” is like chopping off one of my hands. 

This insight has not solved my issue with direction and purpose with my writing because I still don’t have a specific category to fit my writing into. But getting an affirmation to be true to my own style of creativity has ignited the spark again. The door is open.