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Katie Van Ark
Passion on the page

Writing resolutions - Skating into writing

1/7/2014

3 Comments

 
With the season of resolutions upon us, my vow is to find more time to devote to writing this year. To help commit to this resolution, I've been reflecting on what brought me to writing and why I write.

I skated my way into writing. At first reading, this may seem to imply that writing glided to me, as natural as sleeping and waking. It didn't. Writing came with the bruises of repeated Axel attempts: soaring jumps of hope crashed by rejections from agents. Writing came with the ice burn of editors' criticisms, the pulled muscle torture of a high school English teacher reading the short stories of our entire class aloud. (Two minutes in, I became painfully aware that mine would have been better targeted to a middle grade audience; half a class period later I was scrunching in my seat with the realization that I had written not a short story but a novella.)

No, when I say I skated into writing, I mean it literally. My passion for skating cultivated my passion for writing. Though I played with writing as a child, my heart belonged to skating. I acted out entire competitions with my dolls, scrutinized the biographies of top competitors, and longed to try it myself. I took ballet and piano lessons, but the nearest ice rink was fifty minutes from our house and skating seemed an impossible dream.

With the help of adult learn to skate classes, I came to skating as an adult and fell head over skates...in love. I thought I loved skating before; now, I breathed skating. This sounds perhaps like something that might happen to a character in a novel, but the passion was so overwhelming that when I was pregnant with my first daughter and became too pregnant to skate anymore, I came home and cried for two hours. What was I going to do? Pouring the intensity of that emotion onto the page, I rediscovered my passion for writing.

What brought you to the page and what's your writing resolution?
3 Comments
Wendy link
1/6/2014 11:21:11 pm

Lovely post and so fascinating that not being able to skate brought you to writing. Writing is cathartic for me too.

Reply
Sarah McElrath link
1/11/2014 05:07:12 am

I love to read what you write. It makes me feel as if I've been skating too.

Reply
Isabella Lucas
11/11/2022 03:03:00 pm

My ex-husband and I had always managed to stay friendly after our divorce in February 2017. But I always wanted to get back together with him, All it took was a visit to this spell casters website last December, because my dream was to start a new year with my husband, and live happily with him.. This spell caster requested a specific love spell for me and my husband, and I accepted it. And this powerful spell caster began to work his magic. And 48 hours after this spell caster worked for me, my husband called me back for us to be together again, and he was remorseful for all his wrong deeds. My spell is working because guess what: My “husband” is back and we are making preparations on how to go to court and withdraw our divorce papers ASAP. This is nothing short of a miracle. Thank you Dr Emu for your powerful spells. Words are not enough.
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    Reflections on Writing

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    I love few things better than a bottomless to-read list of books and firmly believe the world has room for all the stories we want to share. This blog is intended to provide resources and spark discussion about improving writing. Opinions are my own and not intended to discredit anyone else's work, only to open conversation. Thanks for reading!

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