Why do I want to be published?

From Gary Chapman’s The 5 Love Languages

My love language, according to The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman, is words of affirmation. My friend keeps pulling me into these quizzes and assessments online, but its true: I express myself with words and I receive a lot of love through words. I can be loved and hurt through words. I experience love through people hearing and listening to what I have to say. I thrive on hearing kind and encouraging words that build me up.

Why do I want to be published?

Writing helps me survive, it nourishes me. I want to be acknowledged. I want affirmation. I want to share my stories with people. Even if it only touches one other person (though lots of people would be nice :-D). I feel as if writing is my calling in life. The truth of this desire makes me want to be humble and deny it. I am also an INFJ personality type according to a Myers-Briggs evaluation. If I feel I can’t contribute something meaningful and positive to the world, I feel I have no purpose. Enough about personality tests though, I actually don’t like them.

I’ve been writing since I was in the third grade. In all that time, I’ve always thought I was too poor to ever be published, not trendy enough, borrowing too much from my inspirations, too sloppy, not diverse enough, and not worthy. Any teachers who read my work, encouraged bu eventually pulled away. Acquaintances got caught up in my urban fiction but wouldn’t read what was closest too my heart which is cross-genre speculative fiction (more along the lines of fantasy) and I didn’t want to be pigeonholed in the urban genre. Even my family doesn’t support my deepest passion with words, encouragement, or money.

But I still wanted other people to read my work. Here I am years later, still thinking about it, still trying. Still writing. I’m either stubborn, stupid, or there’s something to it that hasn’t allowed me to let it go.

The copious amounts of blogging (not referenced here) I’ve done in the last couple of years has helped me get to know myself as person and as a writer. I never gave up, but I’m ready to keep trying again.