Learn to write

threatening myself to give up writing entirely, if I didn’t start to do something about it, seems to have been a good idea. I started to work through a creative writing guide and find it very helpful. (thanks for that suggestion, sparkleman!) I got myself a writer’s notbook and it’s a really good thing to have. (though I feel a little uncomfortable writing in it in public. the thievery poem might explain how I’m feeling in a sort of overstated way :D) Freewriting and mindmapping are very useful concepts. Acknowledging that I don’t have to write something good the moment I sit down to write helps to keep the writer’s block away.
I’ve missed 5 days of NaPoWriMo due to V.I.T.s (very important things), but I’m going to make the best of the remaining days. This daily poetry writing business is quite elating. Today, I missed my bus and was late for work, because I had been so immersed in writing… :D Embarassing…
I feel that I’m truly starting to enjoy writing for the sake of writing and not for the end product. Though I’m also very curious what will manifest itself on the page, it is so unpredictabe. I love the half-unconscious bit about it the most, I think.

It’s been bugging me that I haven’t worked on this goal. I felt the need to once again change its name, because I feel that I have to learn to write before I start to write. I’ll write anyway (hopefully), because I guess it’s quite impossible to learn this without a lot of practice. The creative writing books are waiting for me…

First step: Identify why writing (as a concept) is important to me

1. I’ve pondered the social significance of art. I don’t want to create anything under the premise of art for art’s sake. What art does or can do, I think, is to help develop empathy and encourage thinking about important life issues. I generally want to help people, it would be great if I could do that through writing.

2. Of course, similar things apply to the writer, not only to the reader. I want to encourage myself to think, form opinions and counteropinions and actually do something with them. It’s a step away from the passivity of consuming.

3. I’ve read many inspiring books. Some have consoled me, others have entertained or even made me aware of things that went wrong in my life. I want to give something back in return, or pay it forward.

4. Something that occurred to me today is that I often have lucid dreams and enjoy to alter them while sleeping. Actually, it’s a huge waste of time, as it frequently makes me ignore my alarm clock. I don’t want to get up in the middle of the movie, so to speak. Writing could satisfy my desire for thinking up and developing a story.

5. I enjoy language, obviously. I want to write for the exhilerating feeling of writing a sentence that just sounds exactly right.

6. I’m a perfectionist. That might only have to do with the problems I encounter of running away from the blank page or fearing to ruin a story. But it seems it’s also related to my desire to write. If I wasn’t looking for perfection (or something near it), I might be satisfied by writing diary.

7. I also enjoy music, painting, photography, etc. but writing is the only art form at which I think I might be able to become fairly good. I could be wrong, but it’s worth a try.

8. I want to build a permanent home for the quirky characters that live in my brain. (Sounds slightly crazy, somehow Salingerian. The thought of a simple, reclusive life appeals to me as well :D)

9. I still remember the day we had to write a story about pictures of a hunter and a fox, when I decided I wanted to become a writer. The thought has stayed with me for a long time.

If that manifesto doesn’t motivate me to work on writing, I might as well give it up entirely.

Last week I wrote a crappy poem. Haven’t written anything this week. I really want to focus on prose now, but am too unsure about writing techniques to start any serious project. Therefore I ordered two books on creative writing, which I hope will help to motivate me.

I wrote the draft for a short story, which is going to be extremely helpful, but is by no means a finished story. It could already be a mediocre short story the way it is now. But I’ve decided to complicate the whole thing. However, I didn’t have time to do that before saturday evening and no last-minute-poetry ideas struck me.

Nevertheless, I want to reward myself for sitting down and writing 1000 words. So I’m going to cheat a little and say I fulfilled my requirements for this goal last week. Great beginning :D

every second day is still far too often, it seems. I was able to keep it up only for a week… I should at least be able to write something once a week, I think. At times, I write more often, but this goal should help to get some continuity.

Saturday evening each week will be my deadline.

I’m changing this to every second day. Every day is just too much, I have to have a day in between. I don’t want to scare any creative impulses away by overdoing it :)

even if I have little time and it turns out crappy. I just want to get more writing practice. Writing something that’s complete only once or twice a month just isn’t enough – fragments are weirdly unsatisfying. I’ll count in revision of an existing story or poem.