On Writing...
May. 7th, 2005 11:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatThe day is almost over damnmit! (How does one spell damnmit anyways? I did pretty well on that English Test thing that's making its way around my friend's list, believe it or not. English Genius. 100% of Intermediate. 86% of the Advanced, 86% of Expert or something like that. I bet the ones I missed were morale (can never remember if there's an e on the end or not), hung/hanged, and a while/awhile/for awhile. I blame French class for the e problem, not sure I can blame it on the others. Glad I did well on that test. Was a little skittish about taking it as pathetic as that sounds, since it is just an online test put up by some internet blogger. Why? Because I'm defensive about my writing.
I've worked my ass off to become a good writer. Been working at it since I was five and flipping letters back and forth. Never came easily for me. One of my biggest pet peeves while posting on discussion boards - was the folks who assumed that my writing was a "natural" gift. As if I was born with it, came out of the cradle writing these sentences. Flattered they thought I was good at it. But rather flustered and annoyed that they thought of it as a gift handed down by God or genetics. Uhm no. Writing is only a natural gift - if you write beautifully at the age of ten or you get your first book published at 19. Then, yes, you were born with it. Daddy and Mommy and possibly some higher power gave it to you. And speaking of which, I hate you. You annoying little prodigy born with a sliver spoon in your little mouth. Go away. Say what you will about Saleri, he does make sense now and then. Of course, some of those annoying little prodigies do bless us with marvelous works of art and die at very young ages. (The price of the silver spoon, I suppose.) Everyone has their own timeline, I guess. Some are sprinters, some marathoners. Each at their own speed. At thirty-eight, I feel rushed, as if my life is half-over, the best part gone. But I'm slowly beginning to realize that ain't necessarily the case. Perhaps, just perhaps the best part is beginning to start. Just wish it would begin already... Sorry for the tangent, back to writing - which I hadn't intended to write about, dangnabit. I'd intended to do that interest meme.
At any rate, hate to burst your bubble - but writing is tough, most of us have to work our asses off at it. I have taken numerous writing workshops and courses over the years. Some horrendous, some quite helpful. The best was in college. (Took a poetry writing course in college as well - where I attempted rather unsuccessfully to write a sonnet. It wasn't a bad poem, actually my best one, but not a sonnet. I used grammatical terminology as metaphors. I can't find it or you'd have seen it by now. My poetry seems to have disappeared in a black hole somewhere in my parents house or my apt. It's probably sitting in my parents attic gathering dust, which is a good thing - there's nothing worse than self-indulgent twenty-something unrequited love poems.) I have had people rip apart my writing, filling pages with red ink. One guy once told me that he hated my poetry, it was crap, but my performance of the poetry was fantastic - I read it with an ironic, witty flair which he did not see on the page. In high school I sweated over my essays. I wrote and rewrote them. Often two days ahead of time.
In college? I would spend a week writing a paper. Or if it was assigned for the next day, which was often the case, all night and day long. I remember writing a short story with a 100 degree fever at 12 am in the library, then getting it back from the prof and spending half my spring break re-writing it. Getting it back with more criticism. Re-writing it again. Finally being told it was good enough to submit. So I submitted it to the short story contest, it was my hundredth submission to this contest in a three year period. I'd submitted even more stories and poems to the school literary journal, always rejected. But, something must have clicked, because this round the story won second place. A lofty honor actually, considering my competition was senior thesises. A lot of people were doing Creative Writing as their senior thesis. I'd chosen a comparison of Faulkener's Sound and The Fury to Joyce's Ulysess - thinking it the safer option. I wasn't feeling all that confident about my fiction.
Since then, I've written every single day - either in a journal, business memos and legal stuff, poetry (not so much any more), fiction, or just letters. I can't stop. And when I'm not writing something fictional - I get really cranky. Really depressed. It's never easy for me. My writing. And whenever I do it, whenever I expose it to others, it feels at times like peeling off a layer of skin, exposing a part of myself that should be kept hidden, tucked away. But oddly, I can't hide it, I crave the exposure. I crave a response, even if that response feels like a slap in the face or a claw. To protect myself - I will use qualifiers or disclaimers, either degrading the work before someone else can, or belittling it. Do not believe the disclaimers, they are lies. Lies I tell myself and you, to protect myself from you, the reader. Whose response I fear and crave more than you can ever know.
Hmmm...not really sure where some of these musings come from. There are days that I sit at my screen and just write and here's what comes out.
I've worked my ass off to become a good writer. Been working at it since I was five and flipping letters back and forth. Never came easily for me. One of my biggest pet peeves while posting on discussion boards - was the folks who assumed that my writing was a "natural" gift. As if I was born with it, came out of the cradle writing these sentences. Flattered they thought I was good at it. But rather flustered and annoyed that they thought of it as a gift handed down by God or genetics. Uhm no. Writing is only a natural gift - if you write beautifully at the age of ten or you get your first book published at 19. Then, yes, you were born with it. Daddy and Mommy and possibly some higher power gave it to you. And speaking of which, I hate you. You annoying little prodigy born with a sliver spoon in your little mouth. Go away. Say what you will about Saleri, he does make sense now and then. Of course, some of those annoying little prodigies do bless us with marvelous works of art and die at very young ages. (The price of the silver spoon, I suppose.) Everyone has their own timeline, I guess. Some are sprinters, some marathoners. Each at their own speed. At thirty-eight, I feel rushed, as if my life is half-over, the best part gone. But I'm slowly beginning to realize that ain't necessarily the case. Perhaps, just perhaps the best part is beginning to start. Just wish it would begin already... Sorry for the tangent, back to writing - which I hadn't intended to write about, dangnabit. I'd intended to do that interest meme.
At any rate, hate to burst your bubble - but writing is tough, most of us have to work our asses off at it. I have taken numerous writing workshops and courses over the years. Some horrendous, some quite helpful. The best was in college. (Took a poetry writing course in college as well - where I attempted rather unsuccessfully to write a sonnet. It wasn't a bad poem, actually my best one, but not a sonnet. I used grammatical terminology as metaphors. I can't find it or you'd have seen it by now. My poetry seems to have disappeared in a black hole somewhere in my parents house or my apt. It's probably sitting in my parents attic gathering dust, which is a good thing - there's nothing worse than self-indulgent twenty-something unrequited love poems.) I have had people rip apart my writing, filling pages with red ink. One guy once told me that he hated my poetry, it was crap, but my performance of the poetry was fantastic - I read it with an ironic, witty flair which he did not see on the page. In high school I sweated over my essays. I wrote and rewrote them. Often two days ahead of time.
In college? I would spend a week writing a paper. Or if it was assigned for the next day, which was often the case, all night and day long. I remember writing a short story with a 100 degree fever at 12 am in the library, then getting it back from the prof and spending half my spring break re-writing it. Getting it back with more criticism. Re-writing it again. Finally being told it was good enough to submit. So I submitted it to the short story contest, it was my hundredth submission to this contest in a three year period. I'd submitted even more stories and poems to the school literary journal, always rejected. But, something must have clicked, because this round the story won second place. A lofty honor actually, considering my competition was senior thesises. A lot of people were doing Creative Writing as their senior thesis. I'd chosen a comparison of Faulkener's Sound and The Fury to Joyce's Ulysess - thinking it the safer option. I wasn't feeling all that confident about my fiction.
Since then, I've written every single day - either in a journal, business memos and legal stuff, poetry (not so much any more), fiction, or just letters. I can't stop. And when I'm not writing something fictional - I get really cranky. Really depressed. It's never easy for me. My writing. And whenever I do it, whenever I expose it to others, it feels at times like peeling off a layer of skin, exposing a part of myself that should be kept hidden, tucked away. But oddly, I can't hide it, I crave the exposure. I crave a response, even if that response feels like a slap in the face or a claw. To protect myself - I will use qualifiers or disclaimers, either degrading the work before someone else can, or belittling it. Do not believe the disclaimers, they are lies. Lies I tell myself and you, to protect myself from you, the reader. Whose response I fear and crave more than you can ever know.
Hmmm...not really sure where some of these musings come from. There are days that I sit at my screen and just write and here's what comes out.
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-08 02:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-08 09:22 am (UTC)...for flavor use ;
dagnabbit
darn it
dadgum it
or
#@&* - it
;-P
spelling & writing
From:Re: spelling & writing
From: