Right and Wrong

I've been writing with the same group of moms for a while now. Even though I supply the prompts, sometimes when we sit down to write, I feel like I have nothing to say. Many times. Most times.

I usually revert back to one of my friend Eanlai's favorite devices and start with: "What I really want to say is . . ." then I end up spewing out a Dear Diary rampage about the weird, frustrating, funny, and stupid things happening in my life.

I thought that eventually, if I just kept writing, I would start churning out something literary, something beautiful, something worthy. That never seemed to happen. But, over time, I amassed a pretty large body of weird-ass stuff, so I stitched some of it together and read it at an open mic in Sacramento.

I didn't realize that the audience was going to vote at the end of the night for their favorite story so when they handed out the little pieces of paper to vote on, I was like, Oh shit!, and I started secretly scrawling down my name so I could have at least one vote.

Then the weirdest thing happened. I won. I could totally feel my head swelling to ten times its normal size as person after person came up to me to ask what my name was and to tell me they liked my story. All this time I've been waiting to get good so I could be a real writer when maybe all I needed to be was me.

Are you tired of pretending to be who you think everyone else wants you to be? What if the Wrongness of you is really the Rightness of you? Would it finally be ok to show up just as you are?