Sunday, May 26, 2019

My Writing Output


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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