%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 Well, not so much fun and leisure as...get some damn writing done, you fool! |
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A while ago, I attended a writers' workshop and the lady who hosted it told us all to go away with this bit of advice - to write for just ten minutes a day. I was determined to go ahead with it and I did...for two days. So today I remembered that I'd resolved to do so and I whipped out my journal and wrote for fifteen minutes. I'm typing out pretty much the same thing that I wrote earlier, with some differences. I find I can go a lot more in-depth when I'm typing than when I'm writing by hand. Writing by hand is such a chore! I've struggled with loneliness a lot throughout my twenty-nine years. I struggled with it when I was the only one home with my mum when I was a teen and everybody else had other places to be. I struggled with it after marriage and when we moved into our own house for the first time. I struggled with it after my son was born and I felt torn between pursuing my writing and being a good mum, because my culture seems to indicate that a woman has absolutely no chance of living her own life - or at least, she has no chance of attaining any goals she hasn't already attained - once she has children. I feel it occasionally still, even though I get so little time to myself nowadays that any alone time is simply awesome. I've tried to come to terms with the idea that being alone isn't a bad thing - and a lot of the time, it isn't. My friends don't live nearby so I don't get to see them often, and even when I do, I feel like there isn't much depth to our conversations. I'm surrounded by people who do not think like me, who do not share any of my interests and hobbies. I feel like I've become desensitised to isolation. Loneliness is my preferred way to be. I walked into my college cafeteria at lunch today and it was the usual hubbub of activity. Youngsters walking around, chatting animatedly, shouting across the room, laughing, eating, socialising. I could recall how that clamour wouldn't have bothered me ten-twelve years ago, when I would have been one of the youngsters talking excitedly with her friends. But, as this moment, I just found an out-of-the-way little table and sat down. I watched the crowds for a while, wondering why it was only at moments like these that the sense of isolation became so strong. In the middle of a crowd, I feel most alone. |
| 06:49 I know stories don't necessarily come easy. Sometimes, you have to coax them out, bit by bit, and sometimes you have to battle to get them out because your own laziness gets in the way and because it's not happening straightaway, you lose the motivation to continue, so it becomes a slog. If unchecked, this battle will be lost and you'll have a story sitting in your documents file for years and years, and sometimes, you might go back to read what you've written and think "Hey, this is really good!" but pity you didn't finish it when the ideas were still fresh because now you have no idea where to take it! Those are my fears as a writer. I begin a project, I'm all pumped up, it's going great, and then a few pages in, the inspiration fades like water whirling down the drain. I may try to grasp at it but the water droplets just slip through my fingers. On the flip side, sometimes I continue with stories and I'm in the zone and I'm so enamoured by the idea of writing that I'll dedicate every spare moment I have to it. Those moments are great. Those moments are the ones where I really feel like a writer. I just wish that I had the perseverance to keep going so that every story I begin will make me feel that way, but I guess it's not possible. Some ideas just remain ideas and will never blossom into stories. 06:58 |
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