On Writing

Writing, for me, is an interesting thing. When I was younger, I did a lot of writing. I wrote all the time. If I had free time, I was probably either writing or I was reading. In middle school, I filled notebooks with all kinds of wacky stories and mostly-bad attempts at absurdist humor as I read Douglas Adams books over and over. My middle school had an after-school writers’ group that met every week where students would share their latest creations over Chips Ahoy cookies and Newman’s Own lemonade provided by my favorite teacher ever, John Stewart¹ and I attended every week without fail.

I continued writing in high school. An after-school writers’ group met there as well, filled mostly with juniors and seniors who seemed so cultured and worldly compared to myself and the younger members. Their prose and poetry with previously-unknown themes of sensuality, drugs and exotic travel were eye-opening to a thirteen year old freshman. I devoured their work and explored new poets the exposed me to like Dickinson and Plath. As high school rolled on, I discovered zines and was drawn to their cut-and-paste ethos and deeply personal narratives, and at the same time became interested in playing guitar and drums. I got together with friends, learning how to play our favorite songs and how to write our own, taking poems I had written and crafting them into lyrics.

Crafting music and poetry continued in the first few years of college, and then for some reason I stopped fairly abruptly. Looking back, I think there’s a number of factors that contributed, but it’s hard to say there was a specific reason. I just wasn’t writing anymore. I did some short- and medium-form writing on this site’s earlier incarnations, but I wasn’t writing poetry or music or longer pieces like I used to. Twitter came along later and I use it quote a bit, but nowadays I almost never write elsewhere.

Today I find writing to be extremely difficult. I don’t try to do it very often, and when I do, I usually end up staring at a blank page or screen for a while, not knowing where to start. If I do come up with something, I tend not to get very far and I have a lot of trouble figuring out where to go next. When trying to write music, I sometimes come up with an interesting motif or chord progression, but I have the hardest time coming up with another part into which to transition. Eventully when I encounter a roadblock (and I invariably do), I beat myself up for my inability to meaningfully continue; I remember when writing was second nature to me, and I wonder why I can’t still do that.

I believe one of the biggest stumbling blocks is that I don’t write regularly. Getting into a routine with an activity is a great way to hone your skills and keep them sharp, and this is something that I clearly haven’t been doing. So I’m going to make time to write, even if just for a few minutes.² The other major issue I have is that I subconsciously feel like everything I write is terrible, and that I should be able to write something good. In my conscious mind, I realize that not everything I write has to be or even will be good, and that part of being creative is that some things you create will not be very good, but that you learn how to be better by creating those things and learning from them. It’s just hard to realize that when I’m upset about writing.

So my first step is going to be to reinstate a Mr. Joyce-style journal. I have a small stack of Field Notes notebooks that I bought last year (the last time I decided I was going to get back into writing) and those seem like the perfect thing to use. Additionally, I plan to use this newly-rejuvenated website³ more actively.

With any luck, this won’t be the last you hear of me in 2013. Let’s get some output and break my long cycle of creative despair, shall we?.