Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Why I Climb the Mountains With NorthWord - and How You Can, Too

It'a hard to believe the end of March is almost here. Perhaps it is a sign of my age, but time seems to go so much faster now, the days and weeks of 2016 already melting away as rapidly as the snow on those days when we have had glimpses of spring. And as the end of March approaches so too does the deadline for the next edition of NorthWord magazine - an edition for which I happen to be the guest editor.

I wrote in this blog before why I had chosen the theme I selected for the issue: "Climbing the Mountain." Submissions, the name of their author removed as is the practice of NorthWord to ensure the focus is on the piece and not the person who has written it, have already been rolling in and it seems the theme I chose resonated not only with me.

The offer to serve as a guest editor for an edition of NorthWord was an easy one. I have been submitting to NorthWord for some time now, and it has become the place where my more personal and introspective pieces of writing end up, as they don't quite fit with my other writing outlets.

You see here in the blog I am McMurray Musings, a persona and not a person, created long ago when this blog began. In most of my other work I am the freelance writer, focused on the topic or the tale, and preferably ones not about me but about others instead. In my professional work I remove my "self" entirely of course. And so it is in NorthWord that you find the real me, because it is the place I have found where I can express the inner thoughts and feelings that do not fit anywhere else, It is perhaps the place where I have allowed myself, as a writer, to be the most vulnerable.

I suppose in some sense that is part of climbing the mountain, too. As someone who has been fascinated with extreme mountain climbers for her entire life, I find I am always interested in the routes we take to climb our mountains. There are so many different ones, just like those faced by those who climb the world's extreme peaks, each one with positive and negative facets. And in the end we, just like those climbers, choose our routes, put on our packs, and begin the climb.

Mountain climbers are like writers in one key way: they come back from their journey with stories to tell. It's part of the thrill, really, not just climbing the mountain but sharing the adventure with others, the moment when we reached the peak or the moment when we knew we never would and turned back instead. Just like mountain climbers, writers have a need to tell their stories, to share them - and that is where outlets like NorthWord come in.

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to both contribute to NorthWord and to now serve as the guest editor of this next edition. It has been a chance for me to grow over the years as a writer, and now to experience serving as an editor. I will always be grateful to have had a place to be not McMurray Musings, not the "freelancer", not the "communications professional", but Theresa, the person who has written in NorthWord of her parents and of her divorce, of her heart opening and her heart breaking. This is what NorthWord has been to me. It has allowed me to share the tale of climbing those mountains.

The deadline for submissions is midnight on March 30. It is not too late to share your tale of mountain climbing, whatever your mountain has been. Perhaps you have never written anything before, and perhaps you have. But you have a story - we all do - and this is your chance to tell it. Please take the chance - and climb the mountains with me.



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