My writing didn’t evolve all at once—it shifted slowly, almost quietly, until one day I realized I wasn’t approaching the page the same way anymore.

In the beginning, I wrote out of instinct. It was raw, unfiltered, and driven almost entirely by emotion. I didn’t think much about structure or intention—I just needed to get the words out. Writing was a release, a way to make sense of whatever I was feeling in the moment. And while there’s something necessary about that stage, I’ve come to understand that it was only the starting point. I wasn’t shaping the work yet. I was just letting it spill.

Somewhere along the way, that changed.

I fell in love with prose poetry, and that changed everything about how I write. Without line breaks to rely on, I had to learn how to create rhythm in a different way—through sentences, through pacing, through the way one thought moves into the next. It forced me to be more intentional. Every word had to carry weight. Every paragraph had to feel like it belonged. I couldn’t hide behind form anymore. I had to trust my voice to hold the piece together.

That shift pushed me deeper into symbolism. I stopped saying things directly and started letting images speak for me. Rain became more than rain—it became steadiness, quiet strength, presence. Thunder became intensity, disruption, something that demands to be felt. I realized that meaning doesn’t always have to be handed to the reader. It can be built, layered, discovered. That’s where my writing started to feel more alive—when it stopped explaining and started suggesting.

I’ve also learned the power of details. Not more details—better ones. I’ve moved away from trying to say everything and focused more on saying the right things. A pause, a shift in someone’s expression, the way a voice softens—those moments carry more weight than over-explaining ever could. I’ve started to understand that restraint can be just as powerful as intensity, sometimes more.

Even the way I use dialogue has changed. It’s not always direct, not always spoken out loud, but it’s there—in the way my writing responds to itself, in the way ideas unfold and challenge each other. There’s a conversation happening within the work now, a sense that the piece is thinking as it moves forward, not just stating something and ending there.

A big part of this growth comes from the poets I’ve spent time with. Kerouac taught me how to let writing move, how to trust the flow without losing meaning. Neruda showed me how to make emotion feel tangible, how to give weight to love and longing. Ginsberg gave me permission to be loud when I need to be, to let the writing breathe and stretch beyond limits. Mary Oliver reminded me to pay attention—to the quiet, to the natural, to the small moments that are easy to overlook but carry so much depth. Bukowski showed me how to strip things down, how to be direct without losing impact. And O’Hara taught me that poetry doesn’t have to feel distant or elevated—it can live right here, in the everyday.

I don’t try to sound like them, but I’ve learned from them. They’ve helped me see what’s possible, and in doing that, they’ve helped me sharpen my own voice.

At the same time, I’ve become more aware of how important it is to be unique—to not just echo what I admire, but to find something that feels distinctly mine. That’s an ongoing process. I’m still discovering what my voice sounds like at its truest, still learning how to separate influence from identity. But I’m leaning into it more now, trusting that my perspective, my way of seeing and shaping the world, is enough to stand on its own.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started taking my writing more seriously. Not in a way that makes it rigid, but in a way that makes it intentional. I think more about how a piece is built, how it flows, how it holds together from beginning to end. I spend more time refining, revisiting, pushing ideas further instead of stopping at the first version. I’ve developed patience with it.

That might be the biggest change.

I don’t rush the work the way I used to. I let it unfold. I let it sit. I trust that what I’m trying to say is worth the time it takes to say it well. There’s less urgency to prove something and more focus on creating something that feels complete.

But I haven’t lost the core of why I started writing in the first place. The emotion is still there. The intensity is still there. The need to connect, to understand, to translate feeling into something real—that hasn’t gone anywhere. The difference now is that it’s guided. It’s shaped. It has direction.

I’m not just writing to get something out anymore.

I’m writing to build something that is mine.