A little whimsy, a little wonder, and a whole lot of heart.
Beautifully Unwritten
Julia Lyn
10/19/20262 min read
It is often said: writing is a lonely craft. The irony of this statement? I turned to writing out of loneliness. I dove into my writing. Deep and deeper. The further away from everything around me I became, the better I felt. There, thick in a mild obsession, blocking nearly everything else out, I found something I had lost.
When I was young, I told myself I was going to do something special with my life. I would be a writer. A journalist. I really believed this. Hell, I even told people this.
Oh, the overconfidence of youth. Amazing, beautiful. Stupid.
I miss it. Sometimes.
Fast forward. Marriage one. Two kids. Then marriage two, two more kids. I was going to be more than a stay-at-home mom and housewife. My distant youthful self told me I was destined for something else. Anything else.
I went to college, dropped out, and went back again. Over a decade after graduating high school, I began my career as a teacher. At my school, I was even able to mold my position into what I wanted. Teacher. Librarian. Yearbook advisor.
Hell, I was respected. Important.
That should be enough, right? Isn’t it supposed to be?
For years, I dreamt about writing. I wrote countless passages in my head. Essays. Episodic memories. Children’s stories. They danced through my mind, never to find the pages.
Many nights, I lay awake, imagining pages and pages that I would write in the morning.
Only I would not. I would close my eyes. Along with my dreams, the words floated out of my head, remaining beautifully unwritten.
Until one day, in a particularly dark and difficult time, I started writing. I wrote and I wrote.
And I never stopped.
A piece of myself rediscovered.
I didn’t just write. I poured every extra minute into it. Every thought. Every feeling. And every dream. Words spilled onto pages with a passion I had never quite felt before.
I even decided to seek an agent for my first complete story.
It turned out I wasn’t ready. I was uninformed. Naive and just getting started. Maybe I wasn’t even that good—yet.
Only now, I was awake, ready, and perhaps more than mildly obsessed. I sought to learn and improve. I spent hours writing, editing, and then reediting. One story became three, then five. Soon, fifteen stories. Then more.
The stories were very similar at first. I was truly afraid I would never have another idea.
One-hit wonder. Or not. Every agent rejected my manuscript.
Imposter syndrome is real, but more on that later.
I didn’t stop. I dug. I learned. Darkness faded away.
I wrote more and more and began to see improvement. I applied for and attended workshops. A year later, I even began to find a small community. A once-solitary activity allowed me to connect with a group of similarly obsessed individuals.
Writing can be a lonely craft, but it doesn’t always have to be. Either way, there is beauty in it. Especially when beautifully unwritten becomes… written.
