Life! Give My Creation LIFE!

Well. This hasn't been going as badly as I had feared. I think I got past the initial failure pattern.

What I've been noticing, however, is that I have a lot of trouble just writing normal stuff. This is not condusive to my being able to write on a regular basis. I feel pressured to do a good job, and for me, that requires hours of focus.

Obviously, there's no way I can do that everyday. And, to be honest, there's something I really dislike about the amount of control and crafting that I force into my writing. To me, some of my writing gets reworked to the point that it feels stripped of life, like a cement slab structure - functional, but lacking any sense of beauty.

Mia reminds me that this blog is supposed to be a conduit for writing and a place for me to experiment. As I have said previously, it is easy for me to lose sight of the big picture. This is not the end product, she tells me. I should stop imbuing it with so much importance.

And, as usual, she's right. The real test comes in September, when I go back to SFSU to complete my B.A. in Creative Writing.

One discovery I've had doing this blog, however, is that I've backed into exploring non-fiction, and I like it a lot more than I expected. I still have the bias that fiction is more creative, significantly more difficult (at least for me) to write, and therefore more valid.

Also, it has helped me become more aware of my writing process: those moments when I'm writing well, when I'm not writing well, and the desire to know the causes of each. I've learned that my negative and self-critical nature has one redeeming benefit - the pleasure of meeting (and sometimes surpassing) my own unreasonable standards is intoxicating. And when writing is a frustrating chore that goes nowhere, I've learned that setting it aside does help, and allowing my thoughts to percolate will sometimes result in a piece more satisfying than I could have imagined.

Still, the scariest thing of all is letting myself write extemporaneously. I avoid it at all costs, and this is what I need to do most.

So, I am going to give myself permission to do this. It is integral to my growth as a writer to allow myself to write without boundaries; even (gasp!) badly. I will continue to work on a few things I want to craft, but I don't want it to get in the way of putting words on the page.

Let's just throw ourselves into the abyss and see what happens, shall we?