Why I Write

I have been asked many times “Why Tyler do you write” and this evening if you have been on twitter you would have noticed that lots of other people have answered the same question.
You see when I first started I thought it would end up being some sort of journal that I could post on when ever and no one would notice it. It would be a way to vent out my frustration without pissing off people. THEN AUGUST HAPPENED!
If you do not know what happened because you never saw it, or this is your first time here, I did a MASSIVE post about how bad I thought Brighton pride is. What I didn’t expect was that people would read it. Then I didn’t expect that it would get to Brighton Pride. It did. I have received some back lash from it, and 99% of them are from the people the post is aimed at. Honestly when I first wrote it, it was just going to be another post that was going to be locked away.

Writing became a fucking drug then. WordPress had caught me in hook line and sinker and several months on I’m writing three post a week minimum and have started advertising the shit out of my content.
It turned out that people actually wanted to start hearing from a dyslexic potty mouthed non-binary trans person. People wanted to know how I felt about issues and events that went on in the community. People started messaging me thanking me for the stuff that I was posting. PEOPLE WERE THANKING ME!!! How weird is that? I’m just posting how I feel about things, and my own experiences.
I then realised that there was other reasons why I am now writing. Reasons why I’m up at twenty past two in the morning writing posts and responding to tweets in the late hours of the night. I’m doing it now because I NEED TO WRITE.

I started writing to make myself feel better. It was a way to get out what I couldn’t without a therapist. I started writing to get out the demons and thoughts that plagued me in the early hours of the morning.
Why I write now is because there are 100s of people who are going through the same thing that I am. I write so they can read these thoughts, these ideas. I write now so I can become a better writer in the future and help so many more people. I write now because there are people who cannot write or express their feelings. I write now because its improving my mental health and I know that’s a good thing. I write now, because what else would I do at 3 am.

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Realistic Expectations

I think I have honestly come to the conclusion that I will never make freshly pressed. Not for my lack of trying, or the work I put into a post, but because of my writing style.
I am reminded of my younger years. I used to write a lot and create lots of different stories. I always had one problem, everything I wrote about seemed to come from this dark scary place that, even in some horror movies, it may be edited out because its too scary. That and one other thing
Audience I present to you my problem. I cannot actually properly write or in fact spell.

From a child that had much promise, my teenage life became a huge struggle and I was in and out of hospital, therapy, and at home. My attendance at school  wasn’t the greatest, and in fact by school actually encouraged me not to attend some classes because the teachers didn’t have time to deal with me.
I wasn’t a naughty child, I was in fact quiet. I was however bullied a shit load, and the teachers couldn’t be bothered to handle it. I used to explain to them that focusing was hard, and that I couldn’t understand, but they thought I was causing trouble.
Now fast forward ten years later, when I was finishing my courses on peer education and art leadership. My tutor, and assessor was going through my course work and turned round and asked the one question no one had actually asked me

How long have you known that you are dyslexic?

I was honest, I said that I didn’t understand why she was asking me that, and she had said that going through all my work, you could clearly see that I was. That my wording and writing structures only made sense if you were reading them out, and as written work it was a struggle to work with. She then set me in front of the computer, turned off the spelling and punctuation settings and told me to write my case study on a life as a trans person.
She then turned it back on whilst I had finished. The amount of red was shocking. She explained that she had thought I has it for quite a while, but didn’t question because I had never brought it up. The fact was , was that I had never known.

Its been a few years now since I have found out about it. And in all honesty, I haven’t let it change who I am, though I understand why I am slower than people my age. Its put me at ease, that I also know that I’m not alone also.
The downside has been that, after a long time I have decided to tale up attempting to write again. I do it on my phone, making sure that auto correct is on, so I make minimal mistakes. My other flaw I know is that when it comes to writing, I just write exactly what comes to my mind, without a pause for thought. So this ends up with several long sentences and the odd swears.

So this is why I basically will never end up on freshly pressed. There are many many writers out there who write much better content then I could even imagine. And I know that my style comes off in a way that’s crude, almost basic and at a level I could never compete with. Regardless though, I’m still going to keep trying, whether zero people read my content or a million, its my style, and I’m trying to improve as much as I can.

So, since I write this, freshly pressed is no longer a thing on WordPress. Turns out I never made it on there, but now they have Discover, which is the same. The content seems a little more adult but I still think it will be a thing that doesn’t happen with me.