 |
| unrelated pretty picture |
I miss writing regularly here; I look at my archives and realised I used to write more in a week than a did in a month. Of course I'm still writing -- I can't not write. But I've been writing for myself, writing poetry on discarded receipts at work and notes on my wrist and long journal entries. It's a good writing, but it's a very different kind to the sort that I write with the intention of sharing.
My writing, I think, is better when I'm writing it to share. I stretch myself a bit further. I want to impress you! I'm definitely more hesitant in what I write and the process is more fraught than when I'm writing for my eyes only, but the end result is better. I want to find the balance between those two writing selves, and find some way to become more comfortable with that process of writing for an audience.
You'd think by now I'd be able to do that. I've been blogging for long enough now that it should be second nature to rip out bits of my heart and throw them down into some HTML coding and let it linger around on the internet. But instead, I find myself embarrassed about how I used to write, and even more hesitant to share what I write now, for fear that will further my embarrassment in the future.
That's such an exhausting and unfulfilling way to work though. I'm always going to be embarrassed by what I have done, but that should be okay. It should be a sign of having improved in my work since that last embarrassing piece, and a sign that I had the confidence to share things even when they weren't perfect.
I'll look back on this and cringe.
But I hope I'll learn something from it.
p.s. I have to keep reminding myself that digging a little deeper is important, but it's perfectly okay to write about 'vapid' stuff. not everything has to be such a big deal. i don't need to be so intense all the time. it's okay.
Just letting you know, that in my eyes, you are a great source of inspiration mainly because of the beautiful honesty of your work. Sometimes elegant style or originality are overvalued above what is truly important, but that truly important can vary from reader to reader.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, I want to add that I am going through a similar experience, but it concerns poetry. I adore reading a good poem, re reading it, memorizing it, sharing it, hanging it on my bedroom wall. But most of the time I re read my old poems and find them pathetic, especially in comparation to other's poems. And to think that I thought they were good when I wrote them! Ah, the life of frustrated teenager writers.
I just have to stop and take a moment to reply to this one, because lately, things have been the same for me - more making notes on hands, scraps of paper, and in journals, than on my internet space. And I think that's perfectly okay, because in years to come I'm really going to cherish the little bits and pieces here or there which remind me of how I was. Uninhibited. Myself.
ReplyDeletex
Never be afraid to post yourself here - practice practice practice makes the better writer. Keep going, Libby.
ReplyDeleteI love the "unrelated pretty picture" tag - I "might" have to copy the idea.
ReplyDelete