Change Things Up

How many of you read my last post?

Pretty embarrassing, huh?

I mean, talk about cliché.

So what if it was cliché?

I am Jen Yarrington.

And I can do this.

But the reality is that, in order to write the way I want to, I have to stop worrying about what people will think of me.

Does it matter what my readers think?

If I'm writing a raw, honest account of my life, it shouldn't really matter.

But it does matter because I want my readers to be intrigued and entertained.

Do you see my dilemma? I aim to write an honest, sometimes blunt, account of my life, conflicts, and conquests. If I didn’t care who read it, I wouldn’t even post it publicly. But I have a mission to share what I’ve been through and hopefully inspire and possibly even entertain. It’s a continual skirmish between writing with complete honesty and writing so that I don’t shock my readers and send them running to the nearest home décor blog.

During my time of retreat at my parents’ house, I spent a lot of time thinking about which direction to take with my writing career. I’ve been writing since I was a child, so the problem is that I have a daunting amount of material. There are hundreds of thousands of words on my Google Drive, over a million words on Wattpad in the form of young adult romance, hundreds of sappy love poems written in high school, and years' worth of journals I haven’t read in far too long. 

In 4th grade, I won a national essay contest and got a little note signed by President Jimmy Carter. It was on very official-looking stationery with the return address simply stating The White House. I guess people didn’t know or care about the whole Pennsylvania Avenue thing back then. Or they just assumed that people already knew where The White House was. 

And I guess zip codes were optional in 1980. 

Here are two completely opposite situations in which addressing an envelope with minimal information is acceptable. One is when you send a letter to the president of the United States because everyone knows - or should know - where the president lives and works. At least the postal workers know because they’re government employees, right?

The other situation is when you live in a town so small that everyone knows who you are. When I was little, I received many letters that were addressed to: 

Jenny Rivard

Daggett MI 49821

And no, you can’t call me Jenny.

Unless you’re singing 867-5309 because that was written about me.

And just for fun, here’s another illustration of how things work in a small town. Several years ago, I went into my parents’ bank to cash a check. I asked them if they needed to see my ID because it wasn’t my regular bank, and the teller said, “No, that’s okay. You look like your mom.” 

Back to the topic at hand: I’ve been writing excessively since Al died, slowly unboxing years of trauma that I never had time to deal with. (It’s called survival mode, but I’ll address that in another blog post. Or probably several blog posts.) 

It didn’t take much for me to become overwhelmed since I was processing so much information and trying to group the relevant piles of words together so they would make sense to me. And to anyone else if they come across my writing long after I’m gone. My hope is that they will see me as a tortured genius instead of something much worse.

I hoped to post frequently on my blog not long after Al died, illustrating how I’m healing, learning, and growing. 

That’s why many of them haven’t gotten finished yet. I’m still processing so very much. I’m working on healing, growing, and building a whole new life in the process. If I wait to pull my wisdom together after I heal and learn powerful lessons from all I’ve endured, I’ll probably be on my deathbed. Or maybe already in heaven. 

I wonder if there are literary agents in heaven….

I admitted to myself that it was too hard to tie everything up in a neat bow like the end of a sitcom, where even the most challenging situations get resolved with a few well-timed words and a nice hug at the end. I can’t write like that because there isn’t a nice, tidy ending for many of my losses and sorrows. 

They’re ongoing.

Neverending feels more accurate, but I will have many more opportunities to write about that.

Okay, moving on.

I’ve written many genres over the years. I wrote a ton of poetry in high school and I kept every single poem. If you read through all of them, you’ll probably come to the conclusion that I was clinically depressed (which I likely was). Some of it is pretty dark. But alternatively, it might produce a few laughs since some of it is also pretty sappy. 

I had a pretty good sense of rhythm when writing poetry, so maybe some pop star will adapt it and I’ll make millions! Maybe my poem Broken Promises will be woven into a sad breakup song:

Promises you made to me

You so easily have broken

Promises are just words

Often too carelessly spoken

You didn't seem to care

Those harmless, simple lies

Would break my heart in two

Cause tears to sting my eyes

Promises have been shattered

As also has my heart

How can such things as words

Tear one's soul apart?

That's the first time I've shared one of my poems in its entirety. Please remember that I wrote this around 40 years ago. Yes, it's corny and sickeningly sappy, so sweet it makes me gag. 

Who remembers gag me with a spoon?

In 2013, I began writing romantic fiction, starting with Strong. I wrote this book after returning from a family Christmas in the Smokey Mountains. After spending a charming and idyllic holiday in a gorgeous cabin in Pigeon Forge, I considered how I might have fallen in love with Al if I met him after he became disabled. 

Writing that story was a thrill because it simply flowed from my brain to my fingertips. That was the year there was a huge ice storm here in Lansing, but we escaped the worst of it. But when we returned, another major snowstorm stranded us at home for a week or so. The kids were happy to enjoy all their Christmas gifts while I sat in the corner chair and wrote my first romantic novel.

The experience itself was romantic: the snow locked us into our home, and there were no responsibilities except throwing an occasional meal at my family. That was when I fell in love. I fell in love with Al all over again, I fell in love with fiction, and I fell in love with my brain because it literally did much of the work for me. Once I established my characters and wove them into the story, it began to tell itself. That’s the beauty of creating well-rounded, interesting characters is that I can begin to predict their behavior based on their personality. 

Once I discovered I loved writing fiction, especially romantic fiction, I honed my skills by joining Wattpad, a free site where anyone can write, read, vote, and comment. Since many of Wattpad’s members were teens, I knew I could get feedback from the audience for whom I wanted to write. I specifically asked people to leave feedback about the story structure and my writing in general, and with that feedback, I grew as a fiction writer. 

I wrote over ten full-length novels on Wattpad, resulting in over a million words of practice. With that experience under my belt, I began to realize how amateur my book Strong was. 

I’d love to continue writing fiction, especially romance, as I’m a hopeless romantic. I specifically enjoy fiction because I can create my own world, characters, and story. If I do that with my blog, you will either think I’m living a very interesting life or that I’m delusional.

Now, before you think that I have ten polished manuscripts ready to present to an agent or a publisher, I have to admit that those novels were fanfiction stories about the members of One Direction. I used to be embarrassed by this but it became more clear to me as I wrote that I really had a gift for writing fiction, even if teen girls were drawn to the stories by Harry Styles as a doctor.

I have many different avenues my writing career could take. In addition to romantic fiction, I have a decent sense of humor, so satire comes easily. Finally, I have an enormous pile of stories and lessons and challenges to write about from my own life.

After much deliberation (which is my fancy word for wracking my brain trying to decide the best option based on 76 million factors and then just picking something the way childhood party-goers feel around in the dark to stick a thumb tack to a donkey’s ass) I decided to focus on my blog first. I can focus on consistent output rather than taking months to complete a manuscript, find an agent, etc. My goal will be to post regularly (1-2 posts per week), investigate ways to monetize my blog with ads and hopefully sponsorship, and publicize my blog on Instagram and TikTok if we ever figure out what’s going on with it.

Secondarily, I will start re-writing my Wattpad stories - sans hot pop stars - and posting them on Kindle to establish at least a small stream of income. Eventually, I plan to write a more serious book based on my life, but that will come much later.

But still, the question was, what should I write about? It’s all too easy to write about trauma and suffering because it seems that I’ve been enrolled in the trauma-of-the-month club for far too long. I also love to write humor, but it seems a little inappropriate to use humor in the same post as the description of the day my husband died. 

So I tried to narrow down the reasons I wanted to write. 

1. This has always been number one. I love to make people laugh. I honestly think it would be fun to be a stand-up comedian, but the next best thing is writing things that make people laugh. I’ll be a stand-up comedian who sits down and writes all her jokes. My other dream is to write a humor column like Dave Barry's.

2. I want people to know they’re not alone when they’re going through life-altering trauma or loss. 

3. I want to inspire people without proselytizing. 

4. I want to share how I’m tackling a lifetime of challenges: late diagnosis ADHD, OCD, autoimmune disease, depression, anxiety, and getting out of survival mod/fight-or-flight. It may not be the best method, but I haven’t given up so far, so that’s got to count for something, right?

5. The most important thing I want to share is that I’m still 100% convinced that God is real, God is good, and He is eternally faithful. 

   
   

So, in terms of my blog, I’m going to change things up. It would be far too difficult to write separate blogs for all of my different goals, so I’m going to write everything here instead of trying to write separate blogs with separate purposes: inspiration, satire, and lifestyle. For me, they’re all mashed together, so it would be impossible - and slightly insane - for me to try to write separate blogs for each goal. I can’t separate my life that way, and I certainly can’t separate my brain that way. I will be attempting to write more as a stream of consciousness. But edited, of course. If I gave you an authentic look into my brain, I might be involuntarily committed to that psych ward I was talking about in the last post. (Alexa, play I Would by One Direction.)

I will be writing about many and varied things from my own perspective. 

Duh, of course, Jen. How could you write from any other perspective? 

It’s important that I say this because I never want people to misunderstand me. I'm not teaching or preaching, I'm just telling my story. That will never mean I believe everyone should think, act, and live as I do.

I don’t want that at all, you bunch of copycats.

I’m just telling my story, the only story I’m qualified to tell. This blog is for those who resonate with the challenges I’ve faced, those who feel alone in their specific challenges, and those who are just nosy.

If you support my writing, would you please consider this? Share my blog posts, especially if they resonate with you or if you think they may be helpful for a friend. Also, please consider donating using the PayPal button below. My writing career hasn't exactly taken off, and I still have bills to pay.

Also, if you happen to have ideas or connections that could help me advance my writing career, I'd be so grateful if you could share them with me.

Now that I’ve filled you in on my life’s aspirations, there is only one question left to answer:

Why Can’t I Work?

To be answered in my next blog post.

Image by goranprodan1 on Pixabay