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