Exhibit A

I think I have said before - either here on the blog or certainly in real life conversations - that I think (well it is deeper than that - I know it) that writers - those devoting their time to fiction and certainly those writing blogs like mine and other personal essays are at the heart of it exhibitionists.

I know we all think of people who run around half naked are exhibitionists but I think that writers are exhibitionists in a very deep and visceral way. They expose their minds, they take down the barriers and let you see what they are thinking.

For me this is very powerful and very scary and very cathartic and very rewarding and very scary and very fulfilling and very necessary. There is me in everything I write - sometimes a little bit and sometimes alot. For me the poetry is amazingly personal. I feel it deeply.

In my fiction there is something of me in what I have created. It is my imagination, my creativity. It is a part of me. The details I choose to highlight and the details I choose to omit. What I focus on. Maybe I have not done what I have chosen to write about - but I have written it - it has come from somewhere within me.

It is scary and dangerous fun. I think I could more easily take off my clothes in a room full of strangers than read my poetry at an open mic night. (Let's not run out and test this theory any time soon - let's just let me say this for now.) I would be very hurt if someone said something terribly mean about a poem or if they booed me! It would be hard to hear that.

I know if I am to make it as a writer I have to toughen up and be able to take it - and there are great positives to the writing process. I like that I can share a part of me with everyone. This blog is part of that. I paint pictures with words. I draw for you - the images in my mind through words and phrases. I entertain you with silly stories, with love stories, with poems, and antidotes of my life. I try to shape opinions or at the very least tell you what I really think.

At the end of the day - I am making my thoughts an exhibit. Something to be taken up and examined and rejected or accepted at your whim. It is my contribution to the ongoing discourse. It fulfills me in a way. I have taken on the risk of rejection for the reward of sharing. It feeds me - it drives me forward. With each baby step - it is easier to say what I really mean. It is easier to share it. It is easier to grant you access - if only for only a second - into the me-ness of me - of what I am thinking - of what is important to me.