I have often wondered what makes people write. I know, I know, there’s a lot of reasons: catharsis, expression, communication, revenge, dollas, whatever. Then there is writing for self and writing for an audience. You may know I have been thinking a lot about Pepys’s Diary in the past few months, in large part because I see parallels between what someone like me does and what Pepys was doing, specifically, relentlessly creating a record of the tedium of everyday life. I wonder how aware he was that his writings would fall into someone else’s hands after his death–was he self-editing at all? Did he go back and reread his old ones and think about his past self and how he felt before, and the mistakes he made? Did he experience the rush at finding that exact day or week that was a pivot point into a really good or really bad patch? Would he have killed for a search box like mine??
I think I have mentioned before I have nightmares if I stop writing all together. I had terrible ones when Strudel was first born in 2005 and I was lurking offline and was reading voraciously but too tired to say anything myself. This is the same when I was younger and painted as well, before I switched to words only. When I was 18 I had an intense dream about NOT painting, since I was slacking off quite a bit in the few months after I had gotten married. I dreamt I was in a waiting room and someone called me, but into the hall. There was row after row of paintings that stretched down a long hall and the woman who took me out there (played by Liz Phair, I am not kidding) said, “This is all the work you haven’t done.” And there they were, all these loud tacky paintings that were in my terrible style from when I was in my late teens and early twenties. DEPRESS. Just like everyone else, my brain is trying to kill me.
I have discovered something about myself in writing online for eight years. I have had breaks in between, which I think is good and necessary (though in one case was court-ordered and lame), during which I write offline. I write offline while blogging as well, when I get the urge. And I have found I still self-edit as if someone is looking over my shoulder. I don’t know if I can actually go to the bottom of my brain and write all the terrible truth from there, whether it is base or just boring. Memoirs–you may be reading them. I don’t have the gumption or self of steam to charge for this.
I see a lot of writing I have done as a shorthand for what I was having deeper thoughts about. Some phrases can send me back and I see the words as hypocritical (either a lie to myself or someone else), as a screen, or as a code that triggers something more complex and detailed. Some writing is a secret message to other people, but even the intended target can’t really experience all the layers to it. A friend of mine says she doesn’t understand what I’m talking about sometimes but enjoys it anyway, which is pretty nice. There’s a lot of levels of enjoyment you can get out of something like writing. Novels I read as a kid are a vastly different experience now–sometimes richer, sometimes shallow and disappointing.
I am getting meta this week because I am on a sort of a vacation and Nothing Hoppon. Another thing I have discovered is that I need a Baby Bear situation. Life cannot be TOO TRAUMATIC nor TOO BORING for me to write often and decently. Right now, life is TOO BORING and I am waiting for things and my brain is trying to slide out of my ears. I can barely read a book.
SO. Why do you write? How do you write? Does your brain try to kill you if you stop creating whatever it is you create?
My brain tries to kill me often, and it gets worse if there’s no creativity. On self-imposed writing hiatuses, I have (a) obsessively planned gardens, (b) taken up graphic arts to which I am ill-suited, (c) written long and angry letters to companies or entities to which I would not otherwise pay attention, etc.
We should talk about the “hows” and “whys” one day over beverages, adult or otherwise. I missed seeing you at La Pube last spring, but I was in people-overload mode after continuous socialization for eight hours and being up three hours past my bedtime. I was very sad not to see you.
Here is a story. Leaving aside the atrocious non-novels of high school, I tried to write four novels between 2001 (2002?) and 2008. They all failed for over-planning, lack of understanding of structure, etc. I was bummed in the summer of ’08 for a few reasons, not least of which realizing that fourth novel attempt was doomed. So I went to go see Hellboy II, which was candy-fluffy and had *awesome* trailers. Then I read a post about one guy’s take on what it takes to be a great writer. Then I said “huh,” sat down and did a one page free-write exercise, which pulled in imagery from the trailers and Hellboy and some other books and added blood, torture, sex, and even stranger things from the depths of my id. I set about turning that odd free-write into a story and decided I was writing it solely for myself, with no likelihood of anyone else ever reading it, and that I would write whatever cheesy, trope-y, or socially unacceptable things popped out of my head onto the page. About six or so months later I finished it and put it aside. I’ve since come back to work on it and may ultimately put it through its paces to become a finished novel, but I’m uncertain if it has a chance of selling. Among other things, it’s the way I worked out my anxieties and anger about graduate school. People die. Governments collapse. Cruelty is reified and given a nicer face. Without knowing me, it would be hard to get everything that goes on in it–perhaps without being me. But! This is a story because there is an end and a moral. The end comes at the point where I say that it taught me how to write a novel and gave me confidence to write a better one. The moral is that just sitting down and writing whatever spilled out of my guts was tremendously freeing. It’s true: cannibalism, rape, torture, body modification, and cage matches between surgically intersexed gladiators will set you free.
Also, I know what you mean about needing things just right. I can write in many conditions, but some are more fortuitous than others.
I have blogged in the past and it started out as a way to keep in touch with people I don’t see or communicate with very often; it unfortunately degenerated into a ton of emoness and was tossed aside. I found it very cathartic to write out my problems, empty out my head so I can try and think things through in a more ordered manner or simply forget the whole deal.
I can relate to both J. T. Glover and Rhayden. If I go for extended periods of writing, I start feeling antsy and anxious. As Rhayden said, writing out my problems is very cathartic, even if it doesn’t really do anything to help solve them.
I don’t really know exactly why I write, but it feels so much easier to write for just yourself rather than having to consider an audience. There’s so much censoring that goes on between brain and medium that can affect the end result. But like you, I sometimes catch myself editing my thoughts as I’m writing them, even for myself.
Firstly, the title of this post is what my little sister would say to me in high school when asked if she’d maybe seen something of mine I’d misplaced.
And WRITING! FYCL!!!!1it’s so weird where it comes from for me. I write ideas down for creative things when they hit me and when I don’t I beat myself up because that moment is so wonderful and I will forget. I do web copy writing for mad money in spare time from ho-hum job. BUT! I only write what I consider “young adult”, YA type fiction creatively because when I write for teh grownsups it always seems trite to me. And YA allows for silliness. Currently, I’m doing this sci-fi/future with a 20yo female who finds the key to zero-point energy accidentally by making an engine for her dream hydro-foil and then becomes absolutely frightened by the discovery and potential repercussions and then sails to see her brother and sister for advice. Ack, it sounds stupid synopsized,
J.T. Glover, “Among other things, it’s the way I worked out my anxieties and anger about graduate school. ” This is gold lace, man. I love it! Have you read the Altered Carbon series by Richard K. Morgan? It’s strange futuristtiYou may like!
Hey. This is the first time I have been to your site. I came here from Miss Disgrace.
After finally overcoming the fifth-grade-esque giggle fit I just had over the title of this post, I have decided to go back and read your blog from the very beginning.
I am so looking forward to it.
Hey team, thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it. It’s nice to look into other people’s heads.
JT, I like to hear your thoughts in any form..and thanks so much for the link to that post. I was sad not to see you as well! Good thing Seattle is a hot conf spot, eh?
Welcome, Sus. Uhhh…good luck with the reading.
I write because there is no other choice. If I don’t write, I have nightmares, migraines, panic attacks. And I get crazy. Same goes if I’m just putting words on paper instead of really getting into a story, no matter how small or grandiose. The important thing to realize is that there is worth to writing, intrinsic value that stands aside from any commercial payoff. The world is richer for anyone’s experience being put into the format of choice.
I am not a writer. I have been told otherwise in the past, but I think the people who have told me this are under the delusion that my verbosity is in any way a good gripping story. I have a blog but it’s underutilized. I write about the boring stuff that makes up my day and share it with a few Internet Friends. I will not show my writing to the World At Large.
I am not an artist. I took a drawing class in college which I greatly enjoyed, but even though I improved over the course of the semester I will never be an artist. The class required me to display one of my drawings to the school at the end of the semester, but aside from that I will not show my drawings to the World At Large.
I can not easily show you how I see the world through poetry, prose, or paint, but put a camera in my hands and I can. I *am* a photographer.
I’m looking forward to the cooler months here in Texas because I can finally go outside and take pictures again. My depression and anxiety issues are under control finally, which means that I’m not afraid to walk outside anymore. Outside is where the best pictures are. Inside, well there are cats and computers. I can only spam the ‘net with so many cat photos.
I take pictures because I have to. I don’t suffer any physical effects when I am not taking pictures, but I am frequently thinking of ways to photograph this or that. I do not know much about the science of photography, the automatic settings on my dSLR have spoiled me. I just know what I think looks good.
I share my amateur efforts with the world on Flickr, because I want to show other people what my life is like. I enjoy finding beauty and capturing it for my enjoyment. If other people also enjoy it, well that’s just a nice bonus.
I also knit, but except for very few circumstances that is a highly selfish undertaking (my knitting is for myself). I can’t stand to watch TV and not be doing something else, so that’s when I knit or crochet.