About me

“When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

Learning to write again

I like to write. I have always liked to write. Even when I didn’t want to write I still wanted to write.

I’m on a new journey, though at this point it’s not so new. I’m learning how to write again. I am hoping that I’m healed from past trauma, something that broke me and shattered my dream to write. Five years of working on myself has brought me here, to my blog, that I never wrote in.

I have been trying to write whenever I get a spark to do so. And because I have this here blog, where I am reflecting on how I am making my own decisions in my own life that best suit me and my needs, I’ve decided to use it for this new writing journey.

I have been on this journey for about two years now. But as I begin to read some old stuff from recent classes and random writing sessions, I am beginning to think I may be quite good at this… and I’m ready to stop hiding it.

So here is my blog, one I have used on an off for many years. I am ready to start using it full force now. If you stick around I hope you enjoy some of the writing. If you don’t, that’s okay too.

My journey in writing

When I was younger I thought you had to be like Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte in order to be a writer. Charlotte is my full name, Charlotte Bronte is my namesake… those are big boots to fill.

Obviously I was scared to write, certain I was doing it wrong and scared to not be perfect. Scared to not be Charlotte (there could only be one true Charlotte anyway).

I would write in secret on my phone after I was finished my homework under the covers of my bed, the street light providing light with a weird orange hue in my room. That is not how a girl should be creating her first pieces of art.

I was never really told I was necessarily a good writer, so I always thought that wasn’t my destiny or future. Even when I declared an English major at St. Joseph’s University, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do with it. it was just what I knew, so it was what I did.

Because you see, we already had one writer in the family, Emily, named after Emily Bronte (I kid you not) so it seemed like there wasn’t possibly room for another. But I decided to take my chances and see what I could do with this unexplored desire. And I found what I thought I had been looking for: Journalism.

I didn’t think I was cut out for creative writing even though that was what I loved most. It didn’t seem to fit this narrative I had created in my head. So when I found the college newspaper it was like this huge world had been opened up for me. In the end the whole world kind of sucked me in, chewed me up, and spit me back out again.

While I was getting more praise from my English professors that I was a talented writer I was still trying to hide my writing behind basic news reporting. Quick shoutout to one of my Freshman year professors who told me I should explore my creative writing more. If I could go back in time and slap that Charley in the face and tell her to listen to that professor I would.

I began to devote my whole time to journalism. I like to believe I became pretty good at the whole thing. I studied books and wrote essays for class but I never devoted myself to studying that aspect of writing as much as I did to studying news reporting. Again, I feel like this was a mistake.

My professors knew I could do better but I was sometimes so caught up in real life reporting that I wouldn’t even try to do anything else.

In the end, this plan blew up in my face as you can probably tell by how I am reflecting on it all. Everything I worked for for three years was ripped out from under me and I had no place left to turn, no one to go to.

After that, I was scared to write. Something was completely blocked in my head and I was to stunned to reflect and too sad to put anything into readable words (I didn’t even journal). I thought I was doing something amazing, something worth a career in. Then out of no where all of that confidence in myself dwindled to nothing. I really can’t explain to you what happened to me it was crazy. Though I hope one day I will be able to.

As I picked myself up, one shattered little piece at a time, I started to feel this need to read and write again. I started to enjoy words again and the impact they can have on me. I was still scared to do what I knew I wanted to do, I wasn’t mentally there yet. But I decided to start slowly doing more and more with words.

I took some creative writing classes. I started reading a TON more (thank god because I really like reading). I would write in the park, little stuff that would come into my head. I would pick up old stuff that I wrote, before I was even trained to write.

I decided I was ready to take it on again. The whole writing of it all was calling my name and I was ready to answer. And even though it isn’t my career path anymore, even though I will likely have no readers of this blog, at least I know I can do this again. And that I can do it for me. No one else but me.