Original, huh?
Hello and welcome – if you haven't had a look at my About page, this first post is pretty much the same thing. Just so my hopes/intentions for this blog are clear from the onset. So here goes.
My name is Cheyenne, and I'm a writer (fantasy, if you're curious). I have a separate website for that, but I wanted a place I could be 100% open about the life stuff we're not typically celebrated for discussing. Some of it we're expressly told not to discuss.
But life is damn short and time is never on our side, even when we foolishly think it is as we're dicking around with filters on a photo that 12 people might scroll past, or playing just one more round of whatever addictive game (oh, bonjour, Carcassonne) is currently sucking our diminishing daily brain juice.
I've reached the age where I fear letting one more year of my life pass without being real.
Have you felt like that yet? That you're non-stop hustling to project an image that doesn't reflect what really matters to you, because you're afraid of offending, of sounding negative or unhappy or troubled? Or honest?
If yes, you've come to the right place. Because I'd love to interact with people who want to be genuine about their emotions, their struggles, and their hopes. Society and culture will tell us, especially if you're trying to break into an industry that will thrust you into some level of limelight (however small), that we have to sugarcoat and polish and make presentable our online presence.
But it's still part of who we are, and if someone is turned off by my honesty, they probably won't like my fiction, either. Because that's based in honesty. That stems from the deepest hurts and hardest wants in my REAL life. That's where all of my stories come from.
Enough people in the past year have told me ME TOO about the things I've talked honestly about that I felt compelled to start sharing them in a more public forum, if for no other reason than I can chronicle them and get them out of my head and onto a screen. Because as a writer with 4.5 completed manuscripts and 7 years of querying agents under her belt, I'm determined to get my words out there one way or another – and with still no books published (apart from a short story in an indie anthology) – this is my current recourse. Hey, aren't you lucky!
Mostly this will include the screw-ups, the rash moves, the hideous realities, and any lessons I may have learned (kicking & screaming) ... as well as the current scenarios I'm trying to handle more practically.
Would I rather get to the end of my life and feel I kept all my truest words – my truest self – to myself?
I'm taking a big leap in the dark by putting these words out there. But the question on whispered repeat in my head is: Would I rather get to the end of my life and feel I kept all my truest words – my truest self – to myself?
Hell no.
What's the point of any of this if we don't share what we've learned, and what struggles connect us?
So I hope you find words and truths that encourage you, too. And if you don't find them here, it's okay to be honest. (Just be honest about it somewhere else. Just kidding. Sort of. Ha.)
<3
Cheyenne
