Life lesson from a book (Part 1)

ON SHARING MY WORK

I wasn’t sure if this was something I really wanted to do or if it just seemed desirable at the time since I was reading about sharing your work with the world.

Show Your Work!

Let me share with you about how I came to believe in the importance of showing your work. This lesson was reinforced in me after reading the book Show Your Work! by the author and artist Austin Kleon.

I’m not here to go through the details of the book with you so if you’re looking for a summary, sadly, you won’t find it here. However, let me tell you that it’s quite short and extremely entertaining, so you can finish it in one sitting and you won’t even notice time fly as you breeze through it.

I’ve been thinking about what to write for my very first entry in my brand spanking new website. Don’t get me wrong, it’s got nothing to do with not knowing what to write and everything to do with which one do I do first?

I had several topics already lined up—and I will write them eventually—but something felt off with any of these ideas being the very first one I post on here. They were good topics, but not great for a pilot one. They weren’t representative of how I got to have this site and why I’m on here publishing my thoughts.

If we get right down to it, I’m just a nobody on the internet so who am I to share life lessons with you? But along with documenting life lessons, writing them is a form of exercise for me. A way for me to continue honing my writing skills. If I get feedback, great! But people reading this is an extra, not the objective.

So I was sitting here, pondering. I want to write, work on my blog entry, but I can’t put thoughts to paper—ok, I don’t really use paper anymore—my writing app. I couldn’t understand why nothing was compelling me to create though. What’s stopping my brain from composing?

Then it suddenly hit me. I need to work on what planted the seed in me about starting this website in the first place! And at once, the ideas came pouring out that in a span of a few minutes, I’ve gotten one hundred nineteen words down.

I’m a person who’s learning to listen to her gut and at that moment, mine was saying that this was the subject I needed to do because the words started to flow the moment I decided on this.

In my ‘About ME’ page, I said that I’ve written in some way, shape, or form since I was a child. Writing has never been far away from anything I do, no matter how corporate my task at work was.

Writing was what gave my imagination fuel to run wild. It was what allowed my soul to speak. And it was something that I got to use often growing up. So I took my writing muscle for granted, believing that this, what I’m doing now, will always come easy to me.

But one day, I noticed that my vocabulary wasn’t as extensive as it used to be. When before I could describe something in a broad-ranging manner, now I can only think to use the simplest terms. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m all about using the simplest terms, most of the time.

But it’s different if you want to build worlds and tug at emotions using only your vocabulary.

If I use happy in a novel five hundred times, at some point, I’m going to make you want to pull your hair out. Something I really don’t want to make you do. So it became clear to me then that I needed to start practicing writing again.

I started with journaling and slowly, slowly, I noticed the words coming back like long-lost friends who decided to move back to town. Not only did journaling help me process my thoughts for the day but it also helped me work out my writing muscle—giving me the freedom and the space to play with phrases, mess around with the structure of the sentences, listen to the rhythm and the melody of words strung together.

It was lovely and empowering and just like that, after years and years of forgetting about the joy that putting my thoughts down has brought me, I am once again in love with writing.

So where in all this does the life lesson I got from Show Your Work! come into play? Simple. I’ve determined that I will continue my writing practice aka me writing my thoughts down and I will publish them on this site. Journal entries, short stories, heck, novel-length fan fiction! I want to post most of them here. [Note: I already post my fan fiction elsewhere and I plan to keep them there.]

In chapter 3 of Kleon’s book, titled Share Something Small Every Day under the sub-section Build A Good (Domain) Name, Kleon shared how he registered his own domain and built a website, even when he didn’t know much about doing this. This absolutely resonated with me. Not the website-building part! Thanks to sites like the one I’m on now, this isn’t as complicated as before. Besides, I’m a tinkerer, according to my friend and neighbor, Jhane. I may as well include her name now since I have a feeling I’ll be including her a lot in my stories.

I’m always working on something, according to her. To me, these little life projects are my way of playing, having fun, enjoying my simple life.

I wanted to do the same thing Kleon did, create my own kingdom on the internet. However, just knowing how I am, I wasn’t sure if this was something I really wanted to do or if it just seemed desirable at the time since I was reading about sharing your work with the world. I remember feeling my passion burn bright as I read that book! One could argue, though, that the reason I was reading that book in the first place is because there was already something inside me that wanted to share my words with anyone willing to listen/read. I will never know. It’s just like asking myself which came first: the chicken or the egg.

But I read that book in 2022 and it’s already April 2023 and I found myself still thinking about putting up my own website. I had to finally admit to myself that this website dream is, at least for now, here to stay.

So yesterday (or was it early this morning?), I finally signed up for my own domain and site.

I am now the proud owner of michelleewrites.com.

Since I can hyperfocus when I’m interested on something, I’ve spent the better part of the early morning hours setting up the bare bones of my site so it’s all set to go. I just need to feed it with some meat. And here we are.

I don’t have delusions that writing will make me popular. I do not wish to be recognized by face, no. But I do want to think about how maybe someone will stumble upon this little site and read one essay and he or she will think: hey! This person makes sense. Why don’t I check out her other works?

And if that happens, I would be so happy because, at the end of the day, isn’t this why I wanted to be a writer in the first place? Because I want my words to be read by someone. Being appreciated is icing on my cake.

What about you? Do you have any creative pursuits too? Have you shown them to the public? If yes, where? How has sharing make you feel? If you haven’t yet shown any of your products/projects/masterpieces to anyone, why not? What’s stopping you from doing so? Let’s talk about it. I’m genuinely interested to hear the reason.

Lastly, have you read Show Your Work!? May I suggest that you read this book? And if you do, let me know what you think.

That’s it. Thank you so much for your time. I look forward to sharing more of my thoughts with you in future entries.

See you later!