Wrapping Up the First Year
Well, I know it’s hard to believe, I can barely believe it myself… I have had my column for a year! I have been amazed at the response the magazine has had and in general the support from those friends and family living in the area. Many a week has gone by with a feverish sense of “writer’s block” and then somehow like magic it all comes together.
When I started writing it was for my children and a means to set order to the stories in my head for them. I created characters that resembled family members now deceased as a way of carrying on traditions in the voices of those whose original intentions, I am quite sure were to deliver them directly. Stories about which good moral character could be formed and stories that retold truths about our family and passed history to the young like no other form of recollecting can. I had written and taught classes before the world of Alisa Murray Photography was formed. I had always secretly known I could do this, might even should do this and the birth of my children made it clear that I was, even if not very good at it, going to have to try to be a writer. You know… one of those goals that you tell yourself, “you just haven’t lived if you did not try to do it” sorts of things… This writing “thing” grows upon you and if you are destined to actually do it, for a living or otherwise, it begins to become a significant part of your daily life. You are not choosing it, i.e. the activity of writing, but rather it has chosen you. I have willingly succumbed to it’s grasp and fully accept the binges and purges with which ideas flow and require even at 2 am for me to “just know” it’s calling again! The desire to sleep instead of going and writing whatever it is down has in fact been the hardest part.
I did not know that to agree to writing a column would transform my inner wish to be a writer into a reality, but the act of creating “Living the Sweet Life” has given me the reason to act upon these goals and to meet deadlines set without having time to try to rethink it through and thus talk myself into and back out of writing. My reasons for writing have changed as people have moved me and made it obvious that their voices needed to be heard. The similarities to my work as an artist were revealed and came as a welcome surprise! Some months the stories emerged magically like they had been waiting “behind the corners in my mind”, other months the urges to write have been slow recipes that can not be forced into a worthy piece until they are ready to burst forth. One thing I know now that being a writer, becoming dedicated to the craft of such, is a very similar business to that of a photographer. Being born artistic and having a calling to do that sort of thing has always been as natural for me as breathing. Writing is in many ways the same, and requires a certain level of being “in tune” on some level all the time. As a photographer, I am artistically in the zone so much so that I barely am aware of anything else. When I create my portraits it’s always about seeing and feeling and in my gut connecting… that is why I have been successful in that area because it is a passion and my portraits are reflective of a synergy between myself and my subject.
When I write now I roll out of bed and go to the page, it has become as natural as holding a camera in my hands! I am as connected now physically as I am men- tally both when I am writing as when shooting and that, was when I realized that I am a writer as well. Stretching oneself to move into a different creative medium and find familiarity has been one of this years greatest rewards. I have come to understand that to be a writer is a calling, much like the ever familiar calling I am fully aware of and have embraced that of an artist. When it strikes a fancy to proclaim a truth, reiterate the obvious, assist an organization and blab blab blab…. as a writer, you have to be ready and to hear and respond to it. This column has been a gift, and Sugar Land has been such a warm place to grow as an artist, I appreciate having been given this opportunity to live here and become all of these things. I have been afforded a safe place to stretch out and share in a way such as old friends do. It is a part of our community, a comfortable space where we curl up with a cup of coffee and a fantastic throw and read. It is my promise to you this next year to continue to feed the writing spirit and deliver to you warm, touching and meaningful perspective. Thanks to everyone who has supported me and continues to!
