New Year’s
Goals:
1. Be nicer
2. Be calmer
3. Think about
what I want to be when I grow up (now that I’m halfway through my master’s
degree…)
4. Get
something published
I don't like the phrase "I want to be a writer." I understand the meaning it conveys to most people: it means that the speaker is not currently paid for writing, and would like to be. They would like to earn a living by writing. It is true that I do not do that and would like to. So in that sense, I want to be a writer.
But I've always been a writer, regardless. Being a writer is not being able to sleep because there are words rolling themselves up into beautiful sentences and banging against the door of your mind to get out and onto paper. Being a writer is spending your free time as a child creating stories because you read too damn much. Being a writer is processing the world through your imagination and words. Being a writer is knowing that even though you're not a night person, you can count on that second wind at your computer at 9:45pm that makes you never want to go to bed. I am a writer, because even though it's not how I make a living, it's how I live.
Among the
folders on my computer’s desktop are two are called “Work” and “Play.”
Within the “Play” folder is a folder called “Writing.” I often wonder whether
it’s in the right spot. If I really wanted to make a career out of writing,
maybe it should be in the “Work” folder. But then would it stop being fun? Or
maybe it should get its own folder altogether? Then again, if I really wanted
to make a career out of writing, maybe I should take it out of the conditional
and say, “If I really want to make a
career out of writing, I will put it into the present tense and get on with it already.” It's not conditional, it's just the condition of things.
Hence, the blog. The inspiring writers I am privileged to call my
friends write as regularly as possible and I want to get better at it. I have
had a blast writing other blogs, especially my blog when I lived in Australia. I even have a great time writing emails, Facebook
posts, and texts, and those might make an appearance here if they strike me as
particularly clever or hilarious. But mostly I want to write publicly because it’s
good to get feedback on my writing. So please, comment! I can use the
encouragement, and it’ll keep up the momentum!
"...words rolling themselves up into beautiful sentences and banging against the door of your mind..." Great image. Gets me thinking about words as the "other." Are they "they," passengers aboard the train of our conscious/unconscious mind - getting on and off at different stops along the way? Or are they bound to us more deeply, parts of the self, us become utterance?
ReplyDeleteGreat question! It's probably different for everyone. For me, words are such an "other." In fact, sometimes I feel like I'm channeling them from somewhere else. It amazes me when writers can talk about their novels and describe characters as if they're real people, because I can go back to re-read short stories that I have absolutely no recollection of writing. Sometimes I'm even surprised by the ending. I mean, I've never written a novel, so I'd imagine that you have to spend so much time with those characters that they almost become real to you, but I have not had that experience. To me, there are words, and I am their conduit, but we are, for the most part, separate entities.
ReplyDeleteMay you and the words you meet enjoy fruitful partnerships in crime (however fleeting) :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Harry!
ReplyDelete