Small Writing #1

The Struggle to Get Words On the Page:

"This is our decision to live fast and die young.

We've got the vision, now let's have some fun.

Yeah it's overwhelming, but what else can we do?

Get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute?"

-MGMT, "Time to Pretend"

Over the past couple of months I have found it difficult to find time to write. I could write at work. I could write at home. Why am I not writing?

I'm not writing because I'm trying to spend most of my time with my friends. I almost want every moment to be fun and full of laughter. I have read enough to know that this is an impossibility even in the "land of the free." I have gotten to the point where I am starting to feel depressed because I am bottling things up and not letting my emotions get out. To me, writing is liberation (literally and metaphorically). In my journal, I can write whatever the hell I want. It could be nonsense. It could be random words put together as a sentence that, were they rearranged, they could mean something. It could be the next New York Times Best Seller. It could be a lot of different things. The question is, does it matter?

To answer my first question: The reason that I'm not writing is not because I have nothing to write about. I have plenty to write about. The problem isn't that I am afraid of my audience. That doesn't bother me (this is on the internet and probably read by people I don't know or will never know and they could think that I'm the biggest idiot in the world, c'est la vie.) The reason that I haven't been writing is because I haven't made myself do it. I wrote a story about six months ago that probably wasn't good, but I made myself do it, and that is the only way that I'm going to get better at writing. When I was writing that story, I was getting up at 9 am, having coffee, reading a little, maybe eating something, and then getting to it--writing whatever I felt like writing. At that point, I looked forward to it. I want to be that way again.

To answer my second question: yes, writing does matter--even if it sucks. It can be theraputic, successful, a complete failure, a prize winner, a vomit-inducing blunder, or just a way to get something out on a page. Yesterday, as I unsullied my car, I found a journal from the spring. At that time I was writing so often and so quickly that I had to use cursive to get it all out faster. After reading a couple passages the ideas started flowing again and getting me in the mood to write.

Writing may be a tough process that involves a lot of self-discipline, I just know in the back of my mind that I would rather write than get an office job and "wake up for the morning commute."