The Writing Process Leans Toward Growth

Benjamin English
3 min readJan 24, 2024

A decade of writing helped to identify my strengths. I could develop a flood when it came to writing. It wasn’t an ideafest overloading the fingers. Instead, writing turned into a fine tuning of the guitar. I couldn’t play music unless the guitar was in tune. Yet, in a writing style I was trying to develop through journaling, I needed to know my instrument.

The mind wasn’t the problem. The building of structure was the issue. Yet, I didn’t know what structure I wanted. I wasn’t quite a storyteller and I wasn’t blown away by the slow build of unimportant details. Maybe I was too simple for what I was reading.

There was too much metaphor and hyperbole in my heart. I liked new expressions without interference. There was no leaning into an author or a poet. The method was to go inward but not so deep that weird fishes with big eyes would begin to blink in the midnight zone of space.

Journaling was the freedom zone and that experience was new. It helped that as a fresh young adult, there was a positivity and readiness for living at the time. It was connected to childhood discovery. The memories of swinging really high, running really fast, and jumping really far. Imagining all those basic things you do as a kid to simply feel alive and well because the day was almost over. The sun had to set. Remember when playing felt good? Who killed that? I had to find that me again. That person had it together.

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Benjamin English

Wriggling around just so that you won’t forget. There’s certainly some venom in the looks that you collect.