like stacey i have been stalling over writing this post for a while. but i have been doing a lot of other writing which is pretty good. a lot of the time i feel my general wellbeing is linked to how much writing i do. feels as if i need to 'write things out' a lot of the time. that is how it has always seemed.
for the longest time i have felt like it really helps me to write a notebook where i write specifically to someone. in high school me and stacey did this thing where we would mail each other our notebooks that we kept. for a time we even had one that we would both write in: one would write in it for two months then send it to the other and repeat. it was a cute idea. sometimes i remember things that stacey wrote in there, like this quote from gilmore girls (i'm sad and mad. i'm SMAD) and maybe some things from grey's anatomy about hearts. sign o the times. but i remember having good feelings about 'writing to someone' because it makes you feel like you are less alone. and when we weren't doing the notebook things i would sometimes just write letters to stacey (or other people, not exclusive, but nearly, i'd say 90%) on looseleaf. it always gave me purpose even if i didn't feel like i was writing anything in particular, not a poem, not a story, not even any type of memorable correspondence probably. just seemed important to feel less alone in any way possible.
so at the moment i am writing a notebook to someone back in australia. when i first started writing in it i was homesick for this person and a lot of the writing was about what i was doing in america and how people were and how i was finding it all and generally missing the person. now i am nearly settled in the uk things are sort of settling down and i am trying to write more poems and stories, so a lot of the time i find myself writing in the notebook about the ideas that i have and things that i am trying to get out via actual writing. it's just a thing i thought i would try to see if it works, like if it helps to be quite conscious of what i am trying to write. not sure about it so far.
usually when i try to write something (like a poem or a story) something will have just 'come' to me. i was explaining this to somebody at work the other day, and whenever i tell somebody something like this i think of how i heard ages ago that one day harry potter just walked into jk rowling's mind, fully formed. i was explaining how sometimes poems or stories just come to me and it is all clear to me, what needs to be said and how to do it, or thereabouts, with a bit of work. but not always, and not frequently. so that is why lately i am trying to write about things i want to write about in an expository way, so hopefully i can work out the way that works best, or how i can encourage things to 'come' to me more often.
also i sort of battle with the 'style' that i want to write in. the person i was talking to at work about this stuff asked me what sort of things i write about and i was like "um.. whiny.. girl.. feelings.. type of stuff". which seems accurate. i am a little concerned that i actually write about the same thing over and over. and that when i write a thing that people like i will just try to replicate it so i receive similar praise. at the moment i am trying to think of the good poems i write and the way that i write them as a sort of place in my mind that i can get to in a few moves, if i am just willing to try to do them.
anyway so my relationship with writing is pretty much the above at the moment. i have some writing type goals for this year and they are
- write enough stuff to make a chapbook
- submit stuff to places so people will be interested in a chapbook of mine
- make a chapbook
also it seems to me like reading and writing go pretty well together and my ratio of writing to reading this year is pretty on par.. thoughts?
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