Flow.

All aboard the rails conducting my imaginative process,

Prequel to the formation of yet another piece,

Bringing to the forefront vivid imagery

Displaying in thirty-nine words or less of this verse

The unknown heights soared by my creative prowess.

 

Fully immersed in a world for words

What you choose to see as a line

Is yet another portal I weave,

All in a bid to connect your world to mine.

 

You speak to me, but I don’t hear a thing,

Complete absorption in the art

Mutes the beauty of your sound, my dear,

And because my mind sees the prior restriction as finite

It relishes in relinquishing my fundamental understanding

Of space and time.

 

Dear reader,

I know yarning the golden thread that holds my mental state

Is an admittedly tall task, so before it becomes a drag, 

I ask you to take your time settling into the comfort of my slipstream

Allow me to fulfil my conscious choice;

Allow me to take the brunt of all the creative expenditure

All in the hopes of sparking hope and inspiration

In the hearts of those that are beginning to lose it.

 

– O.D. ©2019

 

Art by: Artsammich

 

If I inspire one person to write something. I’m happy.

I often don’t write with the intention to inspire, but I hear how my friends on WP tell me some of the things I say are inspirational. That used to be the case, but I changed up my writing style to be a reflection of me and not what I believe will attract the most attention or traffic.

It’s freeing writing what you want when you want to write it. Do not ever let anyone police you on how to express your words and how you feel.

The reason I’m saying this is because I want to clearly state how much a don’t like manipulative people. I really don’t like manipulative people. Like, I really, really don’t like manipulative people.

“Hey reader. Just wondering, did I ever, by any chance, tell you how much I don’t like manipulative people?”

Perhaps I was “lucky” enough to grow around manipulative people, so I find it easy to identify manipulation from a mile away. (Before anyone freaks out. My childhood was amazing, so were my teenage years, the manipulators were around me, but it did not ruin my life; it added to it through experience)

Manipulators will make you question your sanity, make you doubt your capabilities just to make themselves feel better and control you. If you have read much of my work you will see how I am nauseated by such behaviour. I was often manipulated, even in my college years. Nothing major, just small tweaks to the way I thought about things. Subtle nudges in unfavourable directions. 

It becomes clearer and clearer who your manipulators are when you start breaking off and doing your own thing. I identified one of my manipulators through my writing, It was all on the one week I had decided to stop seeking advice and critiques from them. All of a sudden my work was now, “sounding cocky… self-serving… not giving hope” according to them.

That’s all well and good but… is abiding by those rules what truly makes good writing?

See, I believe in writing what I want. The very essence of thinking openly and exploring ideas runs at the risk of offending someone, but it does not mean the ideas should be censored as a result. A basic right I had failed to identify early on in my college years. My manipulator identified how (at the time) I loved being the good guy, the hero and latched onto that to make me question my own talents. By painting these bad traits in my writing (the one which was done without their involvement) my manipulator was looking to regain control. Fortunately enough, it only pushed me further, motivating me to write more of this so-called cocky, not giving hope stuff till I reached a point where they realised they had no say in what I did in that area. Only to realize that even without their help, I am capable of finding readers interested in what I have to say (and that my writing was “Inspirational”)

But the thing about manipulators is they are persistent, especially once they have tasted having power over you. Which is why my manipulator moved to try and control a different part of my life. Yes, it’s hard getting rid of a manipulator, dear reader.

Especially when they are family …

To be continued…