Tuesday, March 27, 2012

I Have to Relearn to Write

So I'd figured the crappiness of my blog was the result of word-vomitting non-narrative subject matter. I've been telling myself this, but I think I have truly lost my inner creative writer. My writing is full of to-the-point literalness. When I sit down to write a story, I find myself telling and not showing. Tech writing has taken over my thought processes. I can write no more. I may have been this way for years now. Have I been in denial?

A couple weeks ago, I was working on my novel--the first time in a long time. I thought I was cutting the excess, but now I'm not so sure. My attempts at short fiction of late have been worse than bad. I should market them as a full-proof cure for insomnia. There is no poetry in my writing. Not the tiniest little bit. It's all just flat. This is untenable. If I can't write, I'm not sure who I am.

If you know me, you know I struggle with acne. It embarrasses me to the point that I absentmindedly scratch at it at work as if I can peel it off my face. I make it oh-so-much worse. Do you know that I find the idea of being a bad writer more loathsome than returning to the days of so much acne it hurt to move my face? Because I do.  I would rather put on extra pounds, and have a pizza face, and have my hair as thin and stringy as it was when I was a toe-headed tween.

I think this is the final straw. This is the thing what will motivate me to cancel my internet and return to the ways of my youth. I will read non-stop. I will imagine. I will draw. I will create. I need a new water color set.

My friend Kelsie has kindly offered to help me develop my poetic talents. Her writing has pizzazz. I trust she can build me up without crushing my spirit. I think it may actually be time to enroll in a creative writing class at the arts center too. I need forced writing.

Okay self-lameness, I'm throwing a punch. I hope you can take it.

2 comments:

  1. Oh I'm just drunk with giddiness, being mentioned in a blog already! (blushes!) I am not promising that I'm a poetic genius -- just that I secretly enjoy reading and writing. I've once or twice experienced a co-writing activity, or a peer-reading evening, and it's always been positive. I agree that I will probably not crush your spirit (as long as you don't crush mine!). = ) Thanks for the accolades!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Here's something I did to deal with my own problem - I made my setting somewhere I want to visit (much as we often wanted to visit the places and worlds of stories we read as kids). So my current story is set in the future of the Paracas region in South America. I got to research the wildlife and landscape and it's been fun, meanwhile helping me at least develop the poetic nature of my setting (the characters have a poetry of their own which, for once, I am not struggling with). Just a thought - research and reason have their purpose.

    ReplyDelete