One thing I have found about writing is that it is very cathartic for me. It helps organize my thoughts. In my professional life, I have written and had published a handful of papers and journal articles mostly about evidence-based research, best practices, and practical solutions to problems in my field. I even held a peer review position on one journal for a time.
That is not the same as getting to use my voice for whatever I want whether that is making up a fantasy, working through mental health issues, or just trying to understand where someone else is coming from. I do the latter a lot.
I start with explaining a situation in my head and then maybe write it out. Sometimes you write things like this that are not meant for an audience. I saw several writings like that this past week that made me come to this conclusion. It really made me think about this concept of looking at your writing and determining whether or not it is something that will harm more than provide good. How useful is it to publish versus writing it and throwing it out? In your need to be right or to attack an individual in disguise as attacking a problem, are you attacking a wider audience of people? Do they deserve that?
I must admit, more times than not, I land on the toxic positivity side. It is not that I see things with rose-colored glasses. I do not. I am very observant and very analytical. I just make a choice whether or not I want to focus on that or not. I make a choice whether or not my toxic traits need to be shared or not. I have plenty of them. There is nothing wrong in showing all of you and being accountable for your mistakes. But sometimes my thoughts are not so nice and I can choose to keep those to myself.
Lisa Gray 
I have decided to write a comment on my own blog. Mostly because I had a few thoughts I have been juggling around in my brain and I want to try to keep the post as focused as I am capable of (thank you adhd).
The reason I bring up my writing experience above is not to say, hey look at me, I have experience. The experience does not actually translate that well when you want to jump to a different genre.
It is more about me wanting to say that I recognize the privilege I have.
There are so many people out there that enjoy writing and are good at it, but they may not have the time and the money for the degrees that get them the profession that allows them to hone their craft and connect them to a team of people like agents and editors and publishers that further give them a leg up.
Some of us do not have all those things in place and choose to just do it for fun anyway and choose to self-publish. Are we all good, no of course not, and I guarantee you that most of us think less of our abilities then our readers do.
I love being in a place though where that doesn’t matter and I would hate to write something where I criticized someone for making the decision to go out on their own even though it is scary and hard, but doing it anyway.
I love all of you that are here and trying and doing it.
LikeLike