A change is coming…

I have a confession to make…

I’ve been feeling a bit different…

In fact, ever since writing my “Delete. Delete. Delete.” post, I’ve felt my blog has been going in a different direction. Even more different from where it was originally headed when I initially started this cleanup project.

What are you saying, Nortina?

In short? Lovely Curses is dead.

Wait a sec! Before you give up on me, let me clarify. I’m not going away again. Just changing.

You see, several years ago, when I changed the name of this blog from my name to Lovely Curses, I was inspired by a poem I had written about a toxic relationship: cursing yourself by falling in love again and again with someone who doesn’t feel the same or, at least, doesn’t treat you the same.

At the time, the “bad romance” storylines resonated with me, because that had been my experience—too many absentee lovers, too many broken hearts. I had plenty of material.

Then one day I woke up and asked myself: Why are you choosing to live in misery? You’re better than this. You deserve better than this. You’re worth more. Decide once and for all what you will tolerate and what you will not. Don’t ignore the red flags. Follow your gut—first impressions are always right.

So I chose to heal rather than remain cursed, and I’m all the better for it, but my writing suffered.

And when I say “suffered,” I really mean that I stifled my creativity by still trying to fit within that identity of writing “cursed” love stories. And as I said in this post, my stories are more diverse than that. I mean, just look at the story ideas I’ve talked about in the last two months…

A slave time traveling to the future...

A present-day story of the Prodigal Son parable…

A Southern Gothic tale about a haunted highway…

A Universal classic monsters-verse…

Sure, I still get an idea to write a twisted love story every now and then, but it’s not my entire identity as a writer. And after not being able to write a word for over two years, what’s more important to me is being a consistent writer again. Refilling my inspiration well and discovering the will, the drive, the motivation to write again.

That’s how the Morning Inspiration prompts were born. The 100-word stories started as a challenge to make myself write something every day. Now, they themselves have become inspiration for longer stories.

And that’s the direction I feel this blog is going. An inspiration blog. A blog for the aspiring writer. A blog that encourages myself and other writers like me to find that inspiration and motivation and write more, write plenty, write the stories we want to read, the stories that deserve to be told, the stories that are authentically us.

Now to address the question everyone’s dying to ask: Will the content of this blog change?

Yes and no.

The kind of content I’ve been posting for the last two months will continue. So if you’ve been enjoying that, I hope you stay, but you may notice the title of this blog change to something a little more personal and inspiring.

Stay tuned…

—Nortina