Get in your go-cart and go, little sister
04 April 2008 05:54 PM Categories: On writing
Things are changing,
rushing along, right? Even though my writing feels
like it's in stasis -- what DO I write about next? --
new synapses are forming, neural networks are sending
offshoots and intertwining even as I type. I'm not
the same person I was two weeks ago and I'll be in a
different place tomorrow morning.
I can do this.
So much of what I've written is confessional, or revealing: here, see, this is how it was for me, this is what I've hidden under my shell. Secrets and shame. I can't seem to write about anything else.
Today I thought I'd try something different, a short piece about how running has helped me both with writing and with pushing through a tough year in my marriage. Running, like writing or maintaining a relationship, takes discipline. You run through reluctance, bad weather, and physical pain. In most cases, things improve with effort and persistence. Even my "inspirational" running story turned an emotional striptease. Though as I write about it here, I can see a way out of that ... I'll have to think about it some more.
Taking the interesting bits of my life and thoughts (if I could figure out which, exactly, were the interesting bits) and writing fiction -- that would be the way to go, the way to really transcend my personal pain-o-rama. But fiction is SCARY . I've barely poked my toe into the murky waters of the personal essay form. Yes, we should do things that call to us, even if they are scary. But I'd like to feel competent in some form of writing first. Work on one neural network at a time.
Ah, well. Maybe just one short story ....
I can do this.
So much of what I've written is confessional, or revealing: here, see, this is how it was for me, this is what I've hidden under my shell. Secrets and shame. I can't seem to write about anything else.
Today I thought I'd try something different, a short piece about how running has helped me both with writing and with pushing through a tough year in my marriage. Running, like writing or maintaining a relationship, takes discipline. You run through reluctance, bad weather, and physical pain. In most cases, things improve with effort and persistence. Even my "inspirational" running story turned an emotional striptease. Though as I write about it here, I can see a way out of that ... I'll have to think about it some more.
Taking the interesting bits of my life and thoughts (if I could figure out which, exactly, were the interesting bits) and writing fiction -- that would be the way to go, the way to really transcend my personal pain-o-rama. But fiction is SCARY . I've barely poked my toe into the murky waters of the personal essay form. Yes, we should do things that call to us, even if they are scary. But I'd like to feel competent in some form of writing first. Work on one neural network at a time.
Ah, well. Maybe just one short story ....