It's two songs in my title today! Oh boy! Both by Alison Krauss. Was trying for songs about writing since that's what this post is about, and those were the two I personally know that aren't REALLY depressing. Those two are only kinda depressing. :P Sure I could of found happier more relevant ones, but I never title a post with a song I don't have in my library and/or know by heart. That also forces me to explore new music, so it serves a couple of purposes.
I love to write. I'm pretty good at it, really. I tend to procrastinate on papers for school because I know I can last minute an A+ paper on ANYTHING. The paper I got a 100 on in my Honors class? Finished 20 minutes before class. Ha! I've slowly broken myself of my obsession of writing 4 different papers on whatever I'm supposed to be writing about, then taking the one I like most and refining it. Now I take my first idea and go with it, however I do re-read it 4 times silently to check for spelling and punctuation errors, and out loud 4 times to make sure it is grammatically sound and makes sense. That whole writing 4 different papers thing ate up way too much time, although it forced a lot of critical thinking.
It gets suggested to me rather often by professors and advisers that I should write something substantial and non-academic. They were trying to nudge me to write for the national honors magazine and get published, but I brushed that off. But every time someone tells me something like that, it doesn't ever go away, really. I have a lot of nagging voices in my head telling me to write something fantastic. I'm not entirely sure why I don't.
It's not like I'm lacking any original material, really. I have well over 100 notebooks full of stuff I've started and stopped, and a bunch (100megs easy) of typed up works I've started and stopped stashed away too. That includes the 7 chapters of that book I started but lost interest in. I'm sure I could frankenstein together something pretty good from the pieces I have. I just don't. Part of me wants to, but part me of thinks I'm not good enough of a writer. People have told me I should take writing classes to learn a style, but fuck that. I like how I write, it's MY style. If I write like someone else tells me to, it's not really me. I've been told I'm not very creative (which seriously amuses me and pisses me off) but it's more I just don't have a direction I feel like aiming my concentration at. That's why I like writing to my blog, I can say whatever I want whenever I want in my personal style. There's a lot of rules to writing something like a book or a publishable work. I don't like rules or constraints.
I should try it just as an exercise in discipline or something. A hobby or something, maybe as a way to wind down in the evenings? Take 30 minutes to an hour and write every evening. As it is now, besides for my blogs and school, I don't really write. Lately though both classmates and professors have complimented my writing and encouraging me to do more of it. I am my harshest critic, so maybe I need to listen to others who see something maybe I don't. At the very least I need to write more just so I don't lose any skills. I've noticed lately both my blog and academic writing weren't quite up to my usual stuff. Partly why I've been writing more to my blog, to write just to write. And as I mention off to the right, this is where I mentally dump some of my thoughts. These are just me following my trains of thought till I hit the end, really.
I have all this crap I want to do, heh. First a marathon and now a book on top of school, AMSA, research...There's so much to do and experience! I've wasted so much time, but I can't regret that. I had to get to where I needed to be when I needed to be there.
The easiest path doesn't lead anywhere.
~A.
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~A.
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