During a winter quarter I had a creative writing class at YVCC. Our first assignment was to write many times
“I am a prolific writer”
Lately the word popped up and just caught my attention so I had to go and look it up in dictionary.com and then google it for examples of application and imagery. That is just what I do when something gets my attention. Research.
I love the word prolific.
It is so full of life. Fertility. Strength. Confidence. Laughter. Intelligence. Etc etc etc etc
By the way, the word Etcetera…hmmm….fascinating to me! but that is another post. A long one too.
Anyway, I had decided to be a prolific writer since that winter and I haven’t.
I had decided to be a prolific everything I could be…and I haven’t.
Being prolific doesn’t come by accident. One has to sweat the pain and work through it. Purchase it with effort, time, sacrifice, opening up the heart. The brave become prolific on purpose because they pursue it.
Being a prolific writer meant being brave enough to step up in front of a podium during that winter quarter. It meant to actually put down in words, use some sand paper on those ideas in the raw and shape them up. It meant creating a bond with total strangers that I’d see later around campus and not be ashamed of my tears and my past and my dreams and my wrongs and my eveything that they hadn’t hear in my poems or short stories but somehow they knew. They knew my spirit and a hint, a shadow of where I came from. But they could really tell, even without certainty but major faith, where I could go; where my potential would go and how far it’d reach.
Maybe they never thought these things in these words and maybe they were too busy to realize. But as they opened up their hearts and where brave enough to share their dreams they made a pact with me to believe in each other. I believed in them. I was sitting there and heard their voices and their writings. I saw their creativity, their irreverence, their loveliness, their desires and frustrations, rising up in wings above everything that dictates that man can’t fly because the economy is bad.
I saw them in my heart and I gave part of my soul when I cried with their singing hearts in their poem and stories. They believed in me too by respecting the time when I stood behind the podium in rebellion to all those lies that say I was tied down to live a life crippled of dreams and bitter with sorrow for the past. Their silence, their applause made me fly so many times and a process of freedom started.
I never wrote poems on assignment or just because. I really don’t think I did after that class. I certainly didn’t do my best. I got my grade and then walked away. But a revolution started in my heart and that tiny molecule of time, that winter, was the start to everything. Actually, it was a part in the process. But I’ll never forget.
Prolific.
There is so much strength, fertility, tears, effort, etc etc etc.
I am prolific.
I am prolific.
I am prolific.
I am prolific.
I am prolific.
In saying that I am not asking permission from the circumstances to be so.
I haven’t signed up for the economy to dictate my soul.
I have submitted myself, though, to the God of all creation and given him my heart and soul and in the process I have become a prolific human.
I will produce strong people, kind people, thoughts, ideas, compassion, generosity, patience.
I am in love with patience.
I am in love with sacrifice.
I am in love with investing in others’ lives.
