Introduction: Valuable Blogs

This book is a collection of blogs from my first year with cancer.  Although I have written for years before alysonwoloshyn.com I have never shared much publicly. The journey I have taken to develop as a writer this year, I feel, has been as significant as the incurable diagnosis which is, unfortunately, the muse for this collection of work.   I am a true discovery writer, which is a style of writing where you don’t work from a full outline, but rather you intuitively write and see where your words take the story.  While I typically have an idea when I sit down at my keyboard, my process is based on spontaneity, letting whatever comes into my brain, flow to my heart and then release through my fingers into words on the page.  At times it is frustrating and challenging, as my fingers hold still waiting for my heart to release the words from my brain.  Sitting stumped at my keyboard, sometimes for hours, sometimes stalled on sections for days, my core often starts churning in knots as I struggle to find the right words to express my state of mind and complete another blog to share.

Until I began putting this collection together, I chalked up the inevitable writer’s block I seem to face each time I start a new piece, to my inexperience as a writer.  Yes, I have much to learn about structure, grammar, spelling, tense, and style (as you will likely note as you read this self-edited and self-published book), reading my blogs as a compilation, I realized the reason I instinctively choose a discovery writing style to share my stories of life with cancer is that intuitively I knew it was the best way I could discover myself.    When I work through the process of moving ideas from my head through my hands, my center takes whatever time is needed to adequately mold the raw belief until it fits perfectly into my heart.  Just like the waves, do not create the ocean, so too our thoughts do not always articulate what we really believe. The agitating pause I experience in creating many of my blogs is simply my core trying to test whether the beliefs coming from my brain are truly the values I can hold genuinely in my heart.  As it is only when I can find the right state of belief, that my fingers can express my true state of mind.

I chose the title “Blogs for the Brain” to recognize the important role blogging has played in my ability to become a more genuine person which allows me to approach my journey with incurable cancer optimistically.  To respect the process, I have tried to make limited edits to each blog, keeping it as close to the original as possible, and have presented my work in chronological order starting with my earliest chosen entry.  In editing the book this way, I clearly saw that what started as a way to update concerned loved ones on my progress, quickly turned into a journey of self-discovery for me, specifically exploring what I most value and I have selected the specific blogs I feel best articulate my beliefs concerning the values I find most important.  As I read back over the entries, I (and hope you) will see evolution not only in my writing style but more importantly in my clarity of thought and subsequently my clarity of self.  This year-long blogging experience has definitely enabled me to better align the beliefs in my brain more closely with the space in my heart and with each new post I share, I feel less agitated as I write and more at peace with myself.  I hope you will continue to join me on the journey and I look forward to sharing many more future discoveries with you.