Fifty-Two Paragraphs

Sometimes, pretending to be an amateur photographer helps me be creative.

In choosing a photo to submit for this week’s Fifty-Two Frames, I asked my husband about a cheeky idea I had.

“I think you’re a writer, not a photographer.”

In other words, I seem to enjoy playing with the captions more than handling the photographs. Really, I’m photojournaling.

“Start a Fifty-Two Paragraphs. That’s who you are.”

Intriguing, and then I went off to class, where tonight I was one of the writers to be critiqued on a submitted piece. That exercise may have finally knocked me over the head.

I’m not being the writer I am today.

Ten-year-old me is being the writer I am today.

I’m twenty years late to my own party.

When I was a kid, I had a fear of writing things down because I knew they’d never be as perfect as they were in my head. I ended up focusing on poetry and journal writing. It was easy to perfect poetry, and it was easy to let journal writing be imperfect.

Now I’m an adult, and I’m still journal writing. I’m trying to write fiction, to tell the stories I have inside, and all I’m doing is tugging at a grain of whatever it was I had back then.

It’s not working.

At least I’m learning.

So… Fifty-Two Paragraphs?