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Limping Along
“It may shock you to hear this, but
just sitting down and writing can be difficult, especially if you don’t have a
topic already in mind, especially-especially if you are not required to do it
for grades or pay…”
I wrote that
2 years ago and since that time I have had significant changes to my life
and my writing has completely changed in output and type since then. I got a career in September 2017 working for
my hometown’s city hall and that dominates my time.
While I do not consider my job
especially difficult, once you get passed learning how to navigate the bureaucracy
it is only a needlessly complicated series of checklists and meetings that
could be emails. However, the job is so
time consuming and so lacks creative elements that I find myself unable to
write for my own benefit. Sure, there
are exceptions and I have pressed myself to write at least one entry on this
blog each month, but it is a side effect of such gainful employment that I do
not have the creative spark while working there.
What I do have is a small but
regular trickle of work that allows me to write in a professional
environment. It does not stretch my
abilities, it is not mentally rewarding, but it is required and has
consequences. I have check what I am
writing to make sure I am not breaking the law; while at the same time having
no metric to follow; and having to interpret what I am told so as to tell it to
other people.
Playing “telephone” via email is
its own sort of writing exercise.
Not this Year
Last year I
didn’t bother to give an update on my goal of writing 1,000,000
words, nor did I give an update on my
goal of writing a blog for everyday of the calendar year. I have certainly tried to advance each and
have made progress. I only have 16 days
of the year without an entry, and I have crossed the 750,000-word goal.
 |
| October and November, why are they my weakest months for output? |
My writing has never been stronger
(at least according to standardized testing, something everyone should question
the validity of) as last October I retook the GRE and scored a 5, putting me in
the 92 percentile on the writing portion of the exam. I took the test in order to apply to
Doctorate programs and am pleased with the results. (I will be writing more
about my decision to do that and the results in the days/weeks to come.) And let’s be clear, I don’t ever want to take
the GRE again. Two
is two too many.
I have had plenty of ideas for what
to write, and have a folder of “Draft Zeroes” with ideas for short stories or
novels and have written out an outline for a book that is only a couple
thousand words but represents something I haven’t done before, a plotted out
story with a beginning, middle, and end.
There is even a rough set of chapter breaks along the way for all the
shenanigans that I might want to slide in.
New ticks and quirks have emerged,
with my tendency to use, “So, …” to start off paragraphs and sentences. A reliance on evidence, citations, and
stating my suppositions causing me to preface everything and then explain my
point. Trying to mix this up with the
occasional, “It follows then…” or a “Taking that as a starting point…” could
make my writing stronger, but that also makes it more verbose. SO,
I am unsure as to how to tackle that habit.
There are other issues I have that
I have never been able to overcome. My
inability to name things is perhaps my biggest weakness when playing Dungeons
and Dragons (which yes, I do credit as part of my writing. While DnD is a game, there is tons of
creative work that goes into it and issues from it, just look at the multitude
of novels that surround the property).
Names are not my forte and the fact that I made two different recurring
characters’ names, “Kevin” shows this sort of wekness.
I like plot and I like setting and
I like dialogue, but ask me who is saying things, the name of where they are saying
them, or what they call the events they are talking about… and I just don’t
know what to say. Often falling back on
the blandest of proper nouns or portentous uninformative claptrap (like “Destiny” a game I dislike
specifically because it does something I see as my biggest weakness).
Maybe you all see some other
aspects of my writing that need improvement, be it a matter of style, content,
or just that I have a number of typos in everything. I have no editor. I do my best… or as I mentioned at the start,
I do what I can.
The Future
My writing
will continue to mutate. I hardly ever
do movie reviews anymore, not because I stopped watching and having opinions on
movies, but because I did movie reviews originally in order to further an
aspect of my writing. And I see my
abilities in movie reviewing as sort of complete. Movies were something I could trust a certain
number of people have seen and have tastes in, they have a language that can be
understood, deconstructed, and evaluated based on a criteria of both personal
taste and technical acumen.
Essentially,
movies are something I could pull apart in multiple ways and in doing so
practice my ability to pull ideas apart.
I could teach myself to recognize foreshadowing, metaphor, and visual
presentations of information. I can look
at a movie like “Hereditary” and see how the movie planted ideas in the mind of
the audience and how well those ideas were capitalized later in the narrative.
Being able
to catch those turns and flourishes is something I think I have down well
enough that I am just no longer all that interested in picking them out. Sure, from time to time, and if I had the
time and creative spark, I am sure I would have just written movie reviews for
the sake of a creative outlet, but in my current state of not having the time
or drive they just do not have that pull on me.
Honestly,
what I want to pull apart more than anything is the old opinions I have on this
blog. My personal world view has changed
so much in the last 10 years that I feel the need to write the rebuttal to my younger
self. I feel like I did not become an
adult till I was 27 and even then, I was not informed enough to hold a real
substantive opinion.
Now that I have degrees, work
experience, and have just had to stand by while the world around me became
various flavors of strange or hostile, I am a changed man and having the young
me’s writing out there informing other people’s opinions of who I am now… it is
misleading to them.
SO, it is likely that this blog will have a few dozen entries where
I look back on who I was and how I thought at the time and just take myself to
task. Hopefully, I am not just so how
much better I am now, but the act of doing this makes me better still. Maybe I can even show other people why I felt
the way I did at the time, why I changed, and why the change is for the
better. Help them change for the better
too.
For Those Reading This
I cannot
emphasize enough how important writing is to who I am. How important it is to my growth as a
person. I cannot recommend it enough to
everyone out there.
Find
something you care about and write about it.
Don’t just write for yourself either.
You have to put it out there.
Even if no one reads it. Even if
those who do call you a talentless asshole.
All of that is part of it.
Writing
something that no one but you will read is masturbatory and does not help you
grow, and it does not temper your skills.
You have to have some standard that exists outside yourself that you are
trying to meet and surpass, even if it is the imagined judgment of potential
readers.
Write.
Please.
Trust me,
it is worth it.
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