Draft draft draft draft

I suppose that title could refer to the wind you can feel moving through this space. It is almost empty, but still there is that feeling, like you've walked into what might be a scary movie. Somewhere, someone (or something) is hiding.

I guess that something is me.

Really it refers to the fact that when I go to my dashboard I see a line down the middle of the screen: draft draft draft draft. I have been thinking a lot about writing, I have even been doing some of it, but somehow the publish button stays unpushed, just unrealized potential at the bottom of the page. I've realized a lot of it is fear. I am terrified of writing. I was about to stop myself and say, "No wait - I'm terrified of people reading what I write and hating me (or worse, not loving me)," but that's not true. I am a little bit terrified of that, but I think I am just as much afraid of writing and hating myself.

I read. A lot. I am not afraid of reading. I think I'm an amazing reader. I see nuances and imagine settings  and feel characters and laugh at all the right spots (and some I'm probably not supposed to). I appreciate and recognize great writing. And it paralyzes me. Because it makes me want to do that, too. It makes me want to find just the right words and capture feelings and truths and tell stories that take you up and down and around and around. But what if (and this will happen, undoubtedly) what I write isn't as good? What if it's just terrible? Somehow my body must be convinced that if this happens I might die. That's the only thing I can think of. That is the only good excuse for not doing what I know in the depth of my being (note: find a better line than depth of my being, ugh) is something I need to be doing to survive. The world doesn't make sense until I write it down.

I'm taking a course on writing for a living. In the first class we talked about that - the idea that one writes because (and I almost quote) something something spider weaving web of words from the soul something something. Which is a perfectly good reason to write, but not really to write for a living. So now I'm trying to find that spot, where I can write for me, for my soul and so on, but also write stuff that people want to read. And that people want to pay me for.

I suppose it's also partly a war that's happening within me between earnestness and snark. I like funny, snarky writing. I really do. I also find myself in that age of aquarius place where I just want the world to be full of love. But I still want to be funny. And it's kind of hard to be funny without being mean. (Thing I just googled: how to be funny without being mean. Judd Apatow comes to mind.)

And now I have written all this and am feeling slightly anxious about putting it into the world because it is just a bunch of ideas and I feel like it should be a perfected essay in order to go out and be read, and if I try to wait for that right now it's just going to stay a draft and so I'm just going to push publish.


Most of this is inspired by reading I've been doing lately. Other blogs. Especially ones where people are dealing with desire and doubt. Like Christina Kelly's. That name feels so good to read again; those Sassy ladies felt like... what and who I wanted to be. 

Resolutions

Instead of New Year's resolutions, Sally and I spent the solstice making lists of things we were releasing and things we were inviting into our lives. Top of my list for things I'm inviting into my life: a focus on creative projects, and sharing them with other people. Because as much as I write, and make, and experiment, it's usually just for me. I know that that can have its place, but where I'm stuck is putting those things out into the world, and out in the world is where I think they should be.

Then I came across literary resolutions, and decided to make one of those, a fair bit after the fact. I posted mine in this week's edition of bookishness, but here it is again:

I resolve to write something that's not an email every day (and read some classic literature). This is today.

Un cahier d'exercise jaune

I decided to attempt to keep a journal in French while I'm doing the French program, so yesterday I went to the art store to buy a new journal. I wandered around and nothing was quite right, until I found this adorable marigold Semikolon notebook. It's small (about 5x8) and has about 160 pages. The pages are lined, which is the only downside (I really love writing on unlined pages), but the colour and size and adorableness of it win. I also bought three of my favourite pen, the Pilot G2 (I prefer the 5mm, but all they had was the 7) two in black, and, for something new and exciting and different, one in turquoise.

I'm interested to see how this whole writing in French thing will go. I think that maybe my tenuous hold on the language will let me experiment a bit more, and maybe I'll end up with all kinds of dreamy, poetic journal entries. Otherwise there might be lots of, "Mon cahier est jaune. J'aime mon cahier jaune." kind of stuff. We'll see.

J'aime mon cahier jaune.

This is probably my last blog entry before I leave for my program, so... a bientôt.

A career

I decided I want a job that involves movies, design, writing, and interacting with great people.

Please and thank you.

Aaron Sorkin, how I've missed you

Now that I've run out of Aaron Sorkin era West Wing episodes (I still haven't decided whether I am going to continue on with the series, any thoughts?), I've been left with a void that was once filled with great characters and better than great dialogue.

A movie about Facebook: sounds ridiculous. And probably boring.

Add a screenplay by Mr. Sorkin and I am so in I'm almost out again.

I have no idea when The Social Network will actually get made, and subsequently released. But I am psyched.

Instead of writing

My hold came into the library the other day. Plot and Structure: techniques and exercises for crafting a plot that grips readers from start to finish, by James Scott Bell.

He begins by discussing the process by which he decided to take his writing seriously, which included obtaining a number of talismans: a poster of Stephen King, a black mug with the word writer stretched across it. He suggested posting something inspiring, so I immediately put down the book and started trolling the internet for quotes (I've always been a quote kind of girl). I found these ones here.

Writing is the best way to talk without being interrupted.
- Jules Renard

If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.
- Emile Zola

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.
- Gustave Flaubert

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.
- Gaston Bachelard

When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
- Raymond Chandler

Make it new.
- Ezra Pound

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.
- Orson Scott Card

English

I want to see (and hear) English as a second language once in a while - hear the things I never do because they are just part of the way I talk - the intricacies - the oddities. I want to think in the kind of poems I love - the ones that work words like the most delicate thread, looping around their meanings to create new ones, building words on words to create so many levels of understanding.

Hear-here-hero-heroin-harrowing-narrowing down.

It's hard work, actually listening to what people say.



(It is raining. I feel grey - in the best possible way.)

automated haiku

This thing creates haiku out of blog posts. Cool.

Mine for the most recent post:

pose was the one way
I was able to enter
the experience


Hmmmm. Feels profound.

(Found via Sara Ryan.)

Untitled

Why some words
put together
are poetry

And some are not.