I’ve been trying desperately to write something over the past several weeks – anything, really – and I am unable to get out more than a few sentences before I delete them and start over. I’ve done it several dozen times and each time I get more and more stressed. Why can’t I get anything down? I would think to myself. Maybe my ability to write is only forced under pressure.
After playing around with that idea for a while, I thought of something else. Maybe the writing part of my brain has been numbed by all the television and movies and video games that have been seeping into my brain more rampantly than ever. So I picked up Pride & Prejudice and started reading, trying to find a more “literary Jill” than is normally around. I am nearly 20 chapters in and still… nothing.
In fact, this little blog post is the longest cohesive anything I have written in at least a month.
Part of me thinks I never have anything to write about because I never do anything exciting. But even that logic isn’t completely sound. I do a lot of exciting things. I lived in NY for a summer during college, I have taken trips to Vegas, Phoenix, Chicago, Notre Dame and NYC since I graduated, I was walked in on in Vegas, I sang karaoke in Phoenix, I rented my first rental car in Chicago, I saw my first live college football game in Notre Dame, and I took trapeze lessons in NYC. Why can’t I find anything exciting or meaningful to write about? I think I just don’t consider my life to be very exciting or story-worthy, like some of the other people I know. I've never been burgled, arrested, assaulted... I've never had a drug addiction or alcohol problem... I'm not gay, I'm not an extremist and I'm not treated differently because of the color of my skin...I've never been homeless or abused. I don't have any huge stories, any special things to write about. I'm an upper-middle class, white, liberal Christian who grew up in Suburbia. It's hard to find the magic in that.
I realize that I am a perfectionist, so perhaps I have been too hard on myself with the little blurbs I start out with. Instead of deleting the first few sentences because I see no promise, maybe I will just keep going, trying to fill just one whole page. After a few days, maybe an idea will come to me.
Hopefully, it will be something meaningful. J
2 comments:
This is my favorite thing you've ever written.
I mean it.
Free association writing - keep on writing, never stop, and you'll see that eventually what you wrote is something worthwhile. It works, believe me.
And never think your life isn't exciting enough to write about. How in the world would I know what an upper-middle class, white, liberal Christian woman who grew up in Suburbia do/think if I didn't read about it here? Not boring at all :)
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