Welcome to Paperback Radio

What is Paperback Radio? It’s a place online where I can write, freely, without fear of judgment from myself or others. It’s a place where I don’t have to explain myself, where I’m free to pour my creativity out into the world uninhibited.

It’s a place where I can be a writer. I can embrace this aspect of myself that, for too long, I’ve denied. I will write about things that interest me, that inspire me, that make me think about the world, and make me think outside of the box that society has tried for years to place me in.

It’s a place for me to be myself by learning who I am. It’s a place for me to allow ideas to flow out of me onto the page and see what comes up. It’s a place for me to surprise myself, to not question who I am, to not jump to conclusions, to quit judging my baby ideas before I’ve given them a chance to roll over, to sit up, or to take their first step.

I don’t even fully think I know exactly what it will become yet, and that’s what excites me: to put my writing out there and see what grows from it. I’ve felt for quite some time now that I’m at the precipice of some new aspect of my creative life, but I haven’t quite been able to see what it is yet.

This is as a fresh new garden bed, filled with soil and fertilizer and compost. I’m throwing a handful of seeds into it and letting them begin to grow. I don’t know what all the seeds are. I don’t know what will grow and what won’t. But I’m excited to see what I can cultivate. The answers will come eventually, I just have to keep writing.

The name “Paperback Radio” came to me in a flash of inspiration and felt right. I am trying to lean into my intuition and let it speak to me. When I think too much about writing, I avoid writing, but there is something freeing about sitting down and letting the words flow out onto the page. I need to get all the material out of my mind before I can form it into something else.

I recently found a box filled with drawings and stories I had given to my dad throughout my childhood, that he had kept. What I created as a child was raw creativity in its purest form. I wrote stories even though I could barely spell a single world in the English language correctly. Once I could write down the ideas that were in my mind, I did. I didn’t care that I hardly knew how to use the materials to do it. I needed to write down all the stories that, prior to then, had been trapped inside.

Back then, all I wanted to do was write. But at some point in my life, I told myself that maybe I wasn’t really a writer. That was a lie. I need to write. So I will. The world won’t judge me any more harshly than I judge myself.