While I like the idea of having a topic-specific blog and I understand that those sorts of blogs have a greater chance of garnering large numbers of readers, I also like to think that this blog is a more accurate representation of me...a 31-year-old TV addict with a husband and kids, having some sort of career/one-third-life/identity crisis.
I've actually considered having separate blogs: one for mom/kid stuff, one for TV stuff and one for the life and times of a writer-who-doesn't-really-write-and-is-thinking-of-becoming-a-pastry-chef, but seriously...too much.
So anyway, this is my fragmented blog. Thank you for reading.
Which brings me to today's frustration with writing. I've been feeling like I'm on the cusp of writing something. Like really writing. Not a speech or an article, but, you know, something that could turn into a book. But it's like my head is so full of ideas from the, oh, 10 years that I've been wanting to really write, that now I can't make sense of any of it. I don't have a driving idea. I don't have a character who has come to me in a vision. I don't even really have a skeleton of a plot. I've just got fragments of things floating around and when I try to write, I get maybe 300 words in and give up. I have many beginnings of things, but just when it needs to turn that corner and become something, I get stuck.
I'm beginning to think that my desire to become a pastry chef is really just a way for me to legitimately turn my back on writing. To say, enough, I can't do it, and do something totally unrelated. The only problem is that I can't stop thinking like a writer. I can't stop formulating scenes in my head based on things that I see and hear. My brain and heart are telling me to write and yet I can't make the translation from thought to sentence. It all falls flat. I'm a writer who doesn't really write.
I am frustrated. And I am jealous of every writer who has ever written anything good (or even not good, at least they wrote something). It's beginning to feel like a foreign language. So I think what I'm trying to say is that I'm trying to work my way out of this stuck place...hoping that if I can figure out how to unlock all the writing that's in my head, maybe I'll feel a little less fragmented in general.
3 comments:
Um, are you sharing my brain right now or what? im seriously freaked out. i too am an aspiring writer who doesnt really have time to write so doesn't write anything but wants to write and ALSO has visions of being a pastry chef... oh the synchronicity of it all.
ok. you cant turn your back on your passion. ifyou think like a writer, you are a writer. you may turn your back on it, but your still a writer who just doesn't write. its in your blood. you cant deny it :)
writing is hard work and committment and determination... and you come face to face w/ lots of rejection.... especially if you're ME.... (just got a string of 4 rejections in a row... depressing? nah!) the hardest part of writing is not the talent. its sticking with it. thats what seperates the men from the boys... or, um, the chickies from the hens. not that we're hens mind you. we're young, vibrant talented chickens still in our prime egg layin' years.
ANYway, this is supposed to be about YOU not me... but i guess im saying "Dont give up" -- if you have only fragments, write down the fragments. you'll pull it all together later. work in your own style and at your own pace. if a book is in you, you wont rest until it comes out. trust me...
Hello!!! you've written some good info articles - for MN parent. I've even read them.
Thank you both. And Alicia, how is that we don't know each other yet? Do you think there's a whole legion of writers who aspire to be pastry chefs?
I will promptly start reading your blog.
Post a Comment