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I realized something today regarding why I feel that a lot of my personal journal entries both for here and on paper are so dull. That is, I sit down and feel like I want to write something and end up feeling like I need to write everything, and I end up with something nebulous that really doesn't convey anything at all. I usually hit some surface thoughts, feel unsatisfied, and usually delete the entry. Sometimes I leave it just so there's something there. That's the process for just about everything I write.
My life is, actually, pretty dull most of the time. I mean, on the surface and at a distance. Close up, it's pocked with lots of grooves and irregularities. Details. Those are what makes it different and interesting. I'm worried about sharing those details with people because I'm concerned that you'll be bored, that you'll find my life uninteresting, but the stuff I'm putting up is already not interesting compared to what I could be posting. There's also the concern of over-sharing. That's clearly a different issue altogether, but as long as I'm on the subject, I'm largely concerned about being mocked or having my experiences disregarded. On the other hand, I'm about as irrelevant to others as I've ever been since maybe ever with some important exceptions, so I'd say that I don't have much to lose on that subject, but in my experience there's always something new.
Man, very mopey! I just mean that this isn't exactly anonymous, here. I can't just mouth off and not expect a certain amount of fallout, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't try to elaborate on stuff in my life because it might not be interesting to everyone.
I've been trying to write more, lately. It's not easy to do. I've never been a great fiction writer, but it's nice to shake the dust off a little. The first thing I wrote in a long time was basically fan fiction porn. Like, that's not my first choice. I did it on a dare, uh, by request. I'm editing it now. I re-read it and I was sitting there shaking my head going, "This is not my best work.", and it's not because it's pretty far out of my writing experience. I didn't feel like I was embarrassed about sex, but I ended up being embarrassed about writing about sex. After I realized that, I thought it was funny. I didn't take it as seriously. I'm editing it because I have a certain amount of pride in creating a finished work, even if nobody is really going to see it but, after a while, I don't know if I'll care. It'll just be like, "Yeah, I wrote this at one point. It was kind of a strange way, at the time, of breaking out of my writing funk but I promised I'd do it so I just wrote it."
I mentioned I was writing some poetry, I think. This is also pretty tough. I used to write a fair amount of mediocre poetry that didn't make it out of notebooks except for classes. I'd write on a prompt and tuck the piece away, and a lot of it just vanished. I didn't intentionally delete it. It's probably out there somewhere. Poetry is short. I suspect that it's short because it's fairly close to music and I suspect that's why the rules for some types of poetry become fairly elaborate; because you're creating a structure for reading something aloud and you're not writing it according to sheet music but you do have iambic pentameter (for example), and that creates its own sound. You can break the rules if you want to. Nobody can stop you, really. I'm going back to a lot of the rules though because I've forgotten a lot of poetry forms I used to know.
I've given myself some unusual challenges to follow, and I've discovered that writing poetry can be really easy, and that's usually not all that meaningful to you, or it can be difficult because you're mining your life for something interesting to write about that's going to make an impact in a very short space. You try to find all these words that create the reaction in others that you experienced in your own life, so you're sitting somewhere reliving the same moment over and over again trying to find the right word, and sometimes trying to fit that experience into a very arbitrary box so your life experience is both moving and appealing. I don't even really know if people still find poetry important to their daily life, but it's a personal excercise. I think it's very possible that nobody will ever read something I've written for fun or that I will never be published, but for me writing is something that I did and I want it to be something that I do. Writing has always been a part of who I am, so at this point I'm trying to dictate which part of me it will be.
My life is, actually, pretty dull most of the time. I mean, on the surface and at a distance. Close up, it's pocked with lots of grooves and irregularities. Details. Those are what makes it different and interesting. I'm worried about sharing those details with people because I'm concerned that you'll be bored, that you'll find my life uninteresting, but the stuff I'm putting up is already not interesting compared to what I could be posting. There's also the concern of over-sharing. That's clearly a different issue altogether, but as long as I'm on the subject, I'm largely concerned about being mocked or having my experiences disregarded. On the other hand, I'm about as irrelevant to others as I've ever been since maybe ever with some important exceptions, so I'd say that I don't have much to lose on that subject, but in my experience there's always something new.
Man, very mopey! I just mean that this isn't exactly anonymous, here. I can't just mouth off and not expect a certain amount of fallout, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't try to elaborate on stuff in my life because it might not be interesting to everyone.
I've been trying to write more, lately. It's not easy to do. I've never been a great fiction writer, but it's nice to shake the dust off a little. The first thing I wrote in a long time was basically fan fiction porn. Like, that's not my first choice. I did it on a dare, uh, by request. I'm editing it now. I re-read it and I was sitting there shaking my head going, "This is not my best work.", and it's not because it's pretty far out of my writing experience. I didn't feel like I was embarrassed about sex, but I ended up being embarrassed about writing about sex. After I realized that, I thought it was funny. I didn't take it as seriously. I'm editing it because I have a certain amount of pride in creating a finished work, even if nobody is really going to see it but, after a while, I don't know if I'll care. It'll just be like, "Yeah, I wrote this at one point. It was kind of a strange way, at the time, of breaking out of my writing funk but I promised I'd do it so I just wrote it."
I mentioned I was writing some poetry, I think. This is also pretty tough. I used to write a fair amount of mediocre poetry that didn't make it out of notebooks except for classes. I'd write on a prompt and tuck the piece away, and a lot of it just vanished. I didn't intentionally delete it. It's probably out there somewhere. Poetry is short. I suspect that it's short because it's fairly close to music and I suspect that's why the rules for some types of poetry become fairly elaborate; because you're creating a structure for reading something aloud and you're not writing it according to sheet music but you do have iambic pentameter (for example), and that creates its own sound. You can break the rules if you want to. Nobody can stop you, really. I'm going back to a lot of the rules though because I've forgotten a lot of poetry forms I used to know.
I've given myself some unusual challenges to follow, and I've discovered that writing poetry can be really easy, and that's usually not all that meaningful to you, or it can be difficult because you're mining your life for something interesting to write about that's going to make an impact in a very short space. You try to find all these words that create the reaction in others that you experienced in your own life, so you're sitting somewhere reliving the same moment over and over again trying to find the right word, and sometimes trying to fit that experience into a very arbitrary box so your life experience is both moving and appealing. I don't even really know if people still find poetry important to their daily life, but it's a personal excercise. I think it's very possible that nobody will ever read something I've written for fun or that I will never be published, but for me writing is something that I did and I want it to be something that I do. Writing has always been a part of who I am, so at this point I'm trying to dictate which part of me it will be.