To Blog or not to Blog

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
~ Sylvia Plath

Self doubt is indeed the enemy of creativity and it was that which held me back for many years until one day I plucked up the courage to start a blog and everything changed. Not that is removed my self doubt, although it has waned over the years but it still rears it’s ugly head from time to time but the blog gave me purpose and disciplined me to actually fucking do it. It is why I called it Molly’s Daily Kiss as I wrongly thought that by doing so it would force me to write something every day. It quickly because obvious that was not the case but the name still works for me because no matter when you come here there will always be a kiss for you to enjoy.

I have always been a writer. As a little girl I used to write stories although my overriding passion above writing them was reading them. Every week my Mother would take me to the library or bookshop (if she could afford it) and I would pick out the books I wanted and sit on the floor in the corner until she was ready to leave, consuming them whilst also dreaming of one day being a writer. But with age came self doubt. Huge overwhelming self doubt that was made worse by teachers and by the time I left school that dream had been well and truly crushed. I genuinely believed I wasn’t able to write or be creative in any other form either. I couldn’t sew or draw or paint.

I pursued other courses, none of which really made me happy but I felt capable of doing them and then I became a Mother and was lucky enough to be in a position to not go back to work. Oddly I think my rediscovery of my creative self probably started then in many ways. I spend hours with my kids, making play dough, painting, baking, building, crafting in all sorts of ways and it was around this time when we got our first home computer and I started writing stories again. Stories that made my heart race and my cunt throb. Stories for me.

Of course self doubt still loomed large and so I never shared them. I wrote them for me and stored them away until one day my internet activities lead me to a site called The Lusty Library. I set about consuming vasts amount of filthy stories there which only led me to write even more and eventually pluck up the courage to send one in to be published on my site. To my surprise it got selected as story of the week and later that month story of the month. I was truly floored by that but also inspired.

Gradually though I found the process of publishing stuff there not very satisfying and as I was now a dedicated reader of a number of sex blogs I thought why the hell not. By then I was newly single and enjoying exploring my sexual self. I went onto Wordpress made my name and as the saying goes the rest is history.

I am about to start my 10th year of writing this blog and to be absolutely honest with you I can’t imagine my life without it. It feels in some way like my companion in my journey through life now. It is the place I express myself creatively both with words and pictures and it was having this blog that got me reaching for a camera and discovering that my art teacher was wrong when they said I wasn’t an arty person. I am, I just needed someone to give me a camera to be arty with. It is one of the reasons why I still maintain today that Art in school is flawed. There is no real opportunity for kids to explore other art forms. It is all about drawing and painting and creating boards of work, there is no opportunity to do anything different and as a result so many kids walk away from school believing, like me they were crap at art and not a creative person. But I digress…

I am hugely proud of my body of work here. It is where I have truly found and flexed my creative self and I know that I am not close to done yet. If anything I feel like I am only really just getting started and coming into my own. I know I am good at what I do but I also know there is always more to learn both about creating and about me. This space has evolved with me over the years and I plan for that to remain the case into the foreseeable future. Even if my life completely changed for some reason and I gave up other projects this one is more than a project this one is a core part of who I am. It is not only where I express myself but it is also a place where I learn and think and evolve and grow. It is a space that has bought me amazing friendships and relationships and an ability to make income that I never dreamt would be possible.

In the Food for Thought prompt Floss asked

What I want to know is why? Why do we let the words fall out of us? Would we write regardless of having a blog? If so what is is that draws us into blogging?

And the answers are

Because I love it and it feeds something really fundamental in me as a person.

The words, and in my case also the pictures, fall out of me because I don’t know how not to let them any more.

Yes, see above

It feeds my creative soul and 10 years on I am as excited to publish a blog post now as I was the very first time I ever did, in fact, maybe even more so. *pushes publish button with a happy sigh