I'm Only Halfway Through My Coffee

I wonder if writing about writing is at all productive to what I'm trying to accomplish here. I keep trying to think of something else to write about but all that comes out are things about my personal life that the rest of the world could do without knowing.

But when it comes down to it, isn't that a large portion of why and what I write? I mean, it pretty much is all about me. I realized this last night when I was replying to a forward my mother sent me that was one of those Myspace-esque surveys (God bless her) and there was a question about how I handle anger and my answer is that I write it out. And I do. Whether it's in an IM conversation to someone or something like this blog (or my locked Livejournal) or my idea book, I just write everything out. It's just what I do. I guess I never viewed it as something particularly special because I've just always done that. It's easier for me to communicate in the written word than spoken or sung.

I hate blogging sometimes because I feel like I ought to be cohesive and each entry should have a beginning, middle, and end like a terrible five-paragraph essay.

The story I want to write the most has the hardest time coming out because of what associations it has and the situations it was born from.

I Can't Finish Anything

Not only did I fail at finishing NaNoWriMo, I'm also in the process of failing at finishing three - count 'em, three - short stories.

All three of these stories have been thunking around in my head like sneakers in the washing machine since the summer and suddenly they all have beginnings. Not brilliant beginnings, but beginnings all the same. The middles and ends have yet to be formed, though. I wonder if anyone else has this process? I have bits and pieces littering my brain and journal pages and papers all over the place and it takes forever for them to form into complete entities.

The piece I submitted to Windhover (which you can see here) was an idea I had in January, wrote bits of in February, and finally made myself complete (partly because it was for an assignment) in April. I guess deadline is what I need, but even self-imposed deadlines have been a pain in the ass.

A lot of what I write about in my personal/idea journal is how I have a hard time writing. This really doesn't make much sense, since I'm writing about not writing, but when it's all you put on the page it's not much of anything is it? I'm sure reams of paper have been lost to such laments. I just really, really want to not be one of those people. Maybe it's inevitable though.

I'm having a hard time focusing my brain today. I ought to plan out posts like I ought to plan out stories, and be interesting and informative. Guess that'll have to come with the stories.

Goals

I've ranked grad schools. Next semester I might as well take the GRE and start working on a portfolio I can be proud of.

1. University of Montana
2. University of Maine
3. University of Minnesota - Duluth

Distraction #74

Title comes from a song. Kudos if you know the song.

The biggest problem I have when it comes to school or writing or much of anything in my life is the problem of distraction. It's not that I have a short attention span. I've always been the person who is perfectly content to sit still with a book. I can concentrate on pretty much anything, even difficult German novels in translation. (Seriously, if you haven't read The Tin Drum, read it now. It's worth it.)

But when there are too many difficult things going on that I know I have to do, I start avoiding everything like the plague. I have writing assignments in my German class that piled up and I'm finally finishing weeks behind. I worry about German - it's my biggest stumbling block in my undergraduate career, aside from the chemistry and physics I took at the start when I still wasn't a humanities major.

So I avoid. And this avoidance bleeds into other things, my writing included.

I hate it and I don't really know what to do.

I have a story percolating with an unreliable narrator. I'll probably work on concentrating on The Tin Drum to help me.

Changes

Lots has happened since that joyous November 1 post. You may notice that previous content is gone, the header has changed, and this whole blog in general has undergone a bit of a makeover.

Why? Well, make yourself a cup of coffee and pull up a chair. I'm serious about the coffee. We're both gonna need it. Don't worry, I'll wait.

To put it simply, life got very much in the way of NaNoWriMo. I know it's a shoddy excuse, but that's the one I'm using. I also know that first drafts are shit, as Hemingway said, but my first draft was abysmal. There were glimmerings of hope, for sure, but I was looking at a product that I knew I could never be proud of as even a first draft. It was going nowhere. I probably should've outlined and done more preparation work, looking back. Now I know.

I know lots of things, actually. The positive things I learned from this mean that my week-long attempt and 12,000 words were not a waste of my time. I learned that I can write great dialogue and need to work on my exposition. I learned that I still don't know exactly what genre I'm best in yet, though I think everything I do might have a bit of a Southern spin to it. I learned that above all else I love writing. At the end of the day, putting words on a page is something I can do that I can love doing. It's not a waste of my time. It's an incredible learning experience and the very thing I can picture myself doing for the rest of my life.

I came to a crossroads during November and now have set a long-term goal for my life. This is exciting and scary. I want to get my MFA in creative writing. From here on out, this blog is detailing my search for programs, my projects, the remainder of my undergrad time, and whatever other drabbles come out.

Here's to it.