Plot twist

CAMP NANO IS IN JULY I LIED oh well might as well write next month, or at least spend the month working on filling out that character creation form.

I did some writing today. I got a book a few years ago called "The Little Red Writing Book" which is about, well, writing, and had some exercises in there to do. After getting halfway through the second chapter I started to wonder if the book really would help me get better at writing, but I kinda liked what I wrote today, and so I thought I'd put it here.

First exercise: Take a walk. Come back home and write what you encountered. Try to write so that your sentences feel the way the walking felt.

(Disclaimer: I am shit at writing descriptive stuff. Dialogue is more my alley. Excessive amounts of dialogue)

The walk began a half hour after a thunderstorm had sailed through. The realty sign boasted that the lot was 22.43 acres, and waterfront to boot. Blocked off by a tiny red chain, our only option to see the lot was to walk. So we did.
It quickly became clear that walking was the wiser choice. The road, invaded by the nature that surrounded it, had become bumpy, uneven, even soft from the rain. Edged by tire tracks nonetheless, the centre had become a tiny river carved from the spring runoff. In other places, baby trees with soft needles reached to the sky, relishing in the room for growth.
The road curved invitingly; we wanted to see what was around the bend. For five minutes we walked until we reached the cabin, disappointingly lackluster considering the $2.7 million price tag. The water was accessible only by a steep grassy path down a rocky slope, an adventure for another time. Yet despite our height, I could still smell the lake, carried up the mountain on the breeze.
The return journey was muggy, the sun having returned to suck the water from everything around us. It was the kind of heat we weren't accustomed to; our hometown was desperately dry. Dry heat doesn't seep into one's face the same way heat does after a good rain.

That was as far as I got. I didn't really like the bit at the end, it's not super relevant, and I'd probably cut it out if I were going to edit it. But it's not like this is a piece of writing into which I poured my soul. I sat down and wrote it in probably 15 minutes. Lucky for me dad and I decided to go on that walk. I forgot to describe the giant, out-of-place rock, though, and the deer, and the density of the trees. Dammit.

Second exercise: What do you get anxious about when you write? Looking like a fool; making some egregrious mistake of grammar or fact or argument; getting yourself sued; causing problems for your family? Make a personal list. Sometimes giving names to the things that trouble us can strip them of their power.

That my writing is bad. That there are people out there who write a million times better than I ever could. That people won't like my story, or the way I wrote it, that they will say it is bad.
That I haven't done enough to improve my writing, and by this alone, I am not a real writer.
I worry that I am getting proud of something terrible, that people will question my judgement because I think something I wrote is good when in actuality, it's terrible.
That my writing isn't good, that it never moves people, that something I write will never stick with them, become their favourite.
That when I say I am good at writing, I'm lying.
It's made all the worse when I don't get a good grade on something like an essay. I hold that up as proof that I'm lying when I say I'm good at writing. At this point, writing is about the only thing I feel confident in saying I'm good at.
But when I was 12 and wrote "Nations", when I was 14 and wrote "Camp Lame-o", I was proud of those stories. They were crappy and I was proud anyway. maybe there was a certain kind of wisdom in that- or at least a certain kind of joy.

I realize how repetitive and bad this is now, of course, but again, I wrote this in like 15 minutes. It's still true, though. It never used to bother me that I might not be good, because everyone said I was, and my writing was of great quality... when I was 10, and 12, and 14, for the age I was at. Except now I'm an adult, and I'm expected to write like one- and I have no idea what I'm doing.

There was one time when I was considering entering a CBC writing contest. You had to write a short story- something I don't enjoy- about a particular theme, and there were past examples of winners on the site. Reading those past examples convinced me that I had no chance of winning. I can't write like that, with hidden meanings and people being dramatic and stuff meaning things, I can't do that. I don't know how. I don't know how to be that obtuse. I don't get it. I didn't like the stuff that was up there, either. Like, it was well written, and interesting, but I didn't like it. Maybe because it felt inaccessible to me, maybe because it intimidated me, I don't know.

Was that the first time I'd felt that my writing wasn't any good? Hardly. But it still stuck with me. That was probably also the same year I had to quit nano for school, and the same year I stopped writing. That's when all this doubt crept in and set up camp. And try as I might, I can't get back what I had once.

This is where I should cut in with some anecdote about how I'm still trying and it'll be fine, but honestly I'm just not up for that kind of positivity today. Thinking about this makes me sad. Thinking that I gave up something I loved so much- something that brought me so much joy, something that gave me an identity- for school makes me so unbelievably sad. There aren't a lot of things I regret in life, but that is one of them.

That's also tied up with the fact that when I was in high school, I spent so much of my time working and studying that that became the entirety of who I was, my entire identity was "IB student" and nothing else. And now I come to university, and people have all these hobbies and interests and the question "What do you do for fun?" is far more tied up in what I gave up in high school than I'd like to admit. I used to have an answer to that question. It's like other people spent high school, y'know, doing school but also having fun, and finding out things they enjoyed, and spending time developing a personality. Sometimes I just feel like yeah, maybe I developed better study habits and ways to deal with stress, but god, I'm so boring. What do I do for fun? Nothing. I sit around in my room on the internet. There's your answer.

I know I'm trying, but I feel like I shouldn't have to be. I just want to be interesting. I just want to be able to say I'm good at something and know that I can prove it. I just want to have stuff to do that isn't schoolwork. I'm great at doing homework (ha! there's one thing). That's about it.

I dunno. It does feel good to want to write something, to have even some sloppy things to be able to share and not feel self conscious about (like, those are rough drafts. If I were to hand them in for anything, I'd edit the shit out of both of them at least 3 times). Also, at this point everyone who knew that I once liked to write has basically stopped asking how my writing is going, because they all know it isn't, so I can stop explaining myself all the damn time.

yer pal,
swegan

P.S. oh and hey, writing friends- because I know both of you (Omnia and Redbeard, that is) read this blog- try the writing exercises, if you want. Just make sure to tell me how it goes, because you are both excellent at writing and I'd want to read what you wrote.