Stuck in self-realization
I had a lot of thoughts to straighten out yesterday, so I spent some time writing in my journal. (I used to write in it a lot, but then I discovered that I could vent and whine on twitter.) What struck me about the most recent entries (aside from the increasing length of time between entries) was that their themes were so similar. Same concerns, same fears, same complaints, same aspirations.
I've kept journals off and on since ~1992. It's pretty clear to me that anyone who reads them in sequence would come away with the idea that I am a fragile, miserable, inchoate lunatic. This false impression is due to pre-selection of the data. When things are going well in my life, I don't sit down to write about it - I spend my time living and enjoying life.
The only things that I journal about are the difficult, painful, tangled thoughts that require the clarity of the written word to be processed, absorbed and understood. I don't know if other people do it this way, using their journals as a brain dump for the worst of what's going in inside their heads, but that's how I do it.
And what's clear from my half-dozen most recent entries is that my relationship to writing fiction isn't bringing me any satisfaction, let alone joy. How bad is it? When I initially wrote the first sentence of this paragraph, I realized I had to change "my writing fiction" to "my relationship to writing fiction", since I've done so damned little actual writing in the last year. I've spent some time understanding the draft novel I have waiting on my desk, and have come up with the crucial improvement that will lift it from mucky crap to a serious, potent work, one which I'm almost certainly not talented enough to bring to fruition. Those notations and a few pages of fresh prose to frame in the idea are all I have to show by way of progress.
Aside from that? I've been unable (or unwilling?) to write much of anything for more than a year. I occasionally scribble down ideas and concepts for new stories, but my heart isn't in it. There's too much noise, too much self-doubt, too much despair. In the bleakest moments, I feel that I've more or less lost the right to even consider myself a writer, let alone to call myself one.
Why do it if it isn't fun? Why torture myself with a Sisyphean exercise? Why not give it up and devote my energies entirely to something more productive? Why can't I just quit? I'm not getting anywhere, so why can't I quit?
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
I've kept journals off and on since ~1992. It's pretty clear to me that anyone who reads them in sequence would come away with the idea that I am a fragile, miserable, inchoate lunatic. This false impression is due to pre-selection of the data. When things are going well in my life, I don't sit down to write about it - I spend my time living and enjoying life.
The only things that I journal about are the difficult, painful, tangled thoughts that require the clarity of the written word to be processed, absorbed and understood. I don't know if other people do it this way, using their journals as a brain dump for the worst of what's going in inside their heads, but that's how I do it.
And what's clear from my half-dozen most recent entries is that my relationship to writing fiction isn't bringing me any satisfaction, let alone joy. How bad is it? When I initially wrote the first sentence of this paragraph, I realized I had to change "my writing fiction" to "my relationship to writing fiction", since I've done so damned little actual writing in the last year. I've spent some time understanding the draft novel I have waiting on my desk, and have come up with the crucial improvement that will lift it from mucky crap to a serious, potent work, one which I'm almost certainly not talented enough to bring to fruition. Those notations and a few pages of fresh prose to frame in the idea are all I have to show by way of progress.
Aside from that? I've been unable (or unwilling?) to write much of anything for more than a year. I occasionally scribble down ideas and concepts for new stories, but my heart isn't in it. There's too much noise, too much self-doubt, too much despair. In the bleakest moments, I feel that I've more or less lost the right to even consider myself a writer, let alone to call myself one.
Why do it if it isn't fun? Why torture myself with a Sisyphean exercise? Why not give it up and devote my energies entirely to something more productive? Why can't I just quit? I'm not getting anywhere, so why can't I quit?
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
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