On writing.
Here is a thing. On writing.
I discovered a whole bunch of questions on frenchiphant's lj - thankyou, for them. I promise to play nicely and put them back, colour-coordinated in their sock-drawer, when I'm done...
1. If you write, is it difficult for you?
Starting to write is difficult, if it's a creative thing or an essay. I put pressure on myself to make it perfect and get freaked out. Writing for something where there's no expectation of perfection, like in a biology prac, or a private letter, or an email, or a journal entry - that flows effortlessly (except when I get stuck on describing a sensation, or a feeling - and the words just don't capture it).
2. Do you practice?
I write a lot - tend to write ridiculously long, self-scathing/joyous/bewildered/depressed/awestruck/hopeless/wondering lj entries. I hardly ever do 'creative writing' though.
3. Do you believe you have a natural talent?
People tell me I do. I think I'm eloquent. But then I have doubts about the validity of my subject matter - I don't know if I have anything to say that MUST be said, it's just all meanderings and ... and then I wonder if, even if I'm good at writing, am I good at 'writing'? I feel like, with my writing, sometimes people read it and are like what the hell? But in the other direction - I don't take it far enough. Re-reading my own writng, it sparks off millions of neurons in my brains - memories, smells, wistful, gorgeous feelings. I must be terribly boring to read it dry - not being me... I only really write to record those feelings but I don't feel as if I ever capture them, so they couldn't transfer to others completely...
4. Where does inspiration come from?
My life. I love recording it - things I've tasted, smelled, seen, felt, heard. Balance and craziness and gorgeousness. Writing about other people, trying to figure them out, I guess. I think of words, all the time, try to think how I would express something, random collections stick and make me smile.
5. When do you like to write the most?
Late at night.
6. Do you have problems with procrastination?
Hell yeah. It's ruining my life.
7. Do you tend to plan what you write before you start or just go head first? (If you do go head first, what influences those first few sentences the most - your surroundings, things you've read by others or crazy streams of thoughts and ideas?)
For essay writing, I've started to plan so that it's not just a big jumble of ideas and thoughts, and so that I can START with something. I have a tendency to want to research research so that I can know everything before I start writing, but you can't ever know everything, can you? Creative writing - I don't feel the need to know everything. I like the unkown, the feeling of discovery as I write. I haven't attempted a piece of creative writing with a plot for years - and those few that I did do once I decided that I would be a writer were full of projection anyway. I don't feel confident writing about other, imaginary people, doing other, imaginary things. It doesn't feel real, I feel like no one would like the characters or there would be something wrong with them...
So I write about feelings, sensations - the feeling of sitting on a train, swelling pink with lust for expression, with thoughts popping and wind blowing and people all around me... I have a fascination with trains - photos of them and thoughts while on them. They symbolise contemplation for me.
Another fascination is stasis - the idea of a jump stopped forever, or someone mid breath, things preserved and stopped and endless... I explained it in a piece of writing four years ago as a fist, in the rain, with lines around lines around lines around. It's like time stopping, and you know it will go on - it's the sensation of realising that you're alive and that you will forget it in a minute but you know it right now and oh my god you're alive...
I can't express it. This frustrates me. I'll go on trying, though. Writing feels like an endless circle, like a slinky, like childhood, and nostalgia, and endless layers of paint.
(I love commas. They're like a pause specifically designed for savouring.)
8. Is there such a thing as progress?
Progress? As in what? As in becoming a better writer, better able to express what it is that you would like to express? As in, with all of this new technology, are we having better lives? As in, can you compare the past and the present? As in, does the past exist at all? As in, does nostalgia consume me? (Why yes, it does. It's almost a physical thing... I think it should be a new sense.)
9. Do you like what you write?
Sometimes it sickens me. Sometimes it feels like if I let loose with advectives-as-verbs and weird syntax and thoughts, I'm just trying too hard. Sometimes it resounds within me and I think, I love these words, this language. Words, words, words. I love love love them. They are so precious - their individual sounds so sharp and evocative.
10. Does writing affect you emotionally?
I find if I start writing when I'm distressed, 2000 words or two hours later I should be okay. Occasionally reflection will hit me with reality and it will take me from elation to numbness. I cry, when I write, sometimes. I associate writing with strong emotion. If I am not feeling something, intensely, then what is the point of writing about my current state? Why not create feeling by doing something else - reading, painting, looking at pictures, playing with my ittle brother and sister, sitting helplessly on my bed?
I think I'm addicted to emotion. Huh.
And I wonder why I have the urge to draw when I'm not feeling anything in particular - I think it's because I don't feel that I'm good at it enough to express myself with it, don't find it kathartic.
11. How do you go about editing?
I often edit-as-I-go. Delete clunky words, clunky rhythms - or leave them in because even though I know they sound wrong, I like them for some perverse reason...
If it's a creative thing for school, I'll often get people to read it. I don't trust my own opinion.
12. Have you ever taken a class and did it help you/influence you at all?
I've done quite a few seminars and things - not much one on one stuff. It all makes sense when it's happening, but then it tends to fade away. Stuff like that would trigger writing I guess, but apart from that, not serve much function. I wonder if they've subconsiously influenced me at all...
13. Do you ever borrow?
I wrote a thing, in which I used a whole lot of t.s.eliott's words. It was fun. Sometimes I take a whole lot of spiky words from a book or a time period (e.g. my aztec thing four years ago - avocado, chocolate...) and put them together and then add words and I have a poem. That method involves lots of deleting...
14. Do you know a cure for writer's block?
Writing? Writing.
I don't do much writing which involves aiming for perfection, so i don't often encounter it. I would experience writer's block if I took the story that i have to write for school at the moment, sat down, and said, Okay, Catherine, write. But I'm ignoring it, so it's all good!
If I was to actually sit down and write it, and the words were not coming, I might try just writing really bad words for a while until I had a few small phrases that i liked and then word-souping from them. Or finding a whole lot of words and trying to write sentences, disjointed phrases, with them.
15. Are you ever afraid of writing?
Yes. I'm afraid that all of my old writing wasn't even able to be called writing, that I will reveal too much about myself, that my future, unkown writing will all be horrible, that I cannot write, that I will sit down and encounter something horrible in my mind and not be able to record it and it will just swell in my brain 'til I explode.
16. Does writing play evil little games with your self-esteem?
I think I've detailed them above...
I'm scared of being good at anything, or talented, and if I write something that everyone thinks is good, I hate it. I feel guilty, and like I'm not really good at it, like a fraud. I used to get a lot of help from my mother with schoolwork and things - really relied on her for discipline, and motivation, and editing, and opinions. I always felt guilty, like it wasn't me, like I could never come up with something as good or know as much or be as good as her. I got an A for a history essay, the other day, and my first instinct was to feel guilty - but then I realised that it was all me - I earnt that mark. Didn't take away the residual slimy, ill feeling.
17. Have you ever felt really proud of a piece you've written and do you continue to be proud about it?
A piece of writing that I wrote in year seven, about an aztec girl. I was terribly unconfident about it - it was so different to anything else in the writing competition at school that year. People laughed about it, I think, or thought that it was odd. It made me feel uncomfortable. I haven't read it for a long while...
But I like it. And I'm proud of it.
And another piece of writing, which I turned into a song. About dancing in the air with a close, close friend one evening.
18. Has someone/something in particular influenced your writing or your outlook on writing in general?
Not that I can think of... certain friends, who I talk about writing with, I guess, might have changed my mentality. I really don't know.
19. Do you display what you write, read it only to close friends or keep it secret?
I write something for the school competition every year. Anything else - and it's rare, if we're talking about things unconnected to lj - I tend to show my mum, and maybe a few friends... on lj, if I'm writing about something intensely personal, sometimes I filter it. Sometimes I can't bear to let anyone see something - it's too raw, too giving, I feel like it makes me completely powerless and prostrated. Sometimes I'll write an entry like that and then make it private two hours later once the emotions have dissipated a little...
20. Do you ever feel inadequate and, if you do, why and how so?
Detailed above...
21. For you, what makes the difference between a piece you're satisfied with and a piece you're not?
Wow, great question. I have no fucking clue...
Hrm.
Something crap - well, it would have no rhythm, wouldn't flow, would leave me with a feeling of 'eh.' Like - why did I write this? Who cares?
Or I would be incredibly frustrated because I would know the words weren't expressing what I meant them to. There was a clowns story (clowns was the topic that year...) and a story about two girls in an insane asylum - both of them were disjointed, didn't make sense to the reader, didn't have a logical progression of events, or clear character.
Something that I love when I'm reading is to have an experience. So I guess when I read my own writing I remember - and that's an experience. So my writing, when good, is probably rather crap to other people - but hopefully it evokes an experience of their own inside their minds... I wish that I could think like another person, and not react like me, see it from a different perspective, be someone else, share a mind, telepathy... the paranormal is so interesting. That's why Harry Potter fanfiction can be so great! Haha...
22. Do you look for help, accept help or find it hard to ask for help?
I don'd find it hard. Sometimes I find it difficult to accept help. It always has to be on my own terms - sometimes I'm just resistant. It depends on who the person is. If it's a friend, I know that I'll always listen because advice on writing from friends is rare. Mum on the other hand, if she comes up and starts pointing out faults, I will probably tell to fuck off. I have a weird thing about her helping me... if I want her hep, though, I'll ask her, and that's fine.
23. When is writing its most difficult?
When it has to be perfect. Then it's impossible...
24. Is there any part of the process you loathe in particular?
The anxiety of not knowing how other people experience it. I'm intensely curious...
25. Do you count on the approval or acceptance of others?
Yes. For most people, I wouldn't care what they thought, but for quite a few, I care intensely.
26. Do you consider writing a large part of your life?
I consider words a large part of my life. Whether or not they make it to paper is another thing...
27. Are you pursuing a career in writing?
I don't think I'll be an author... perhaps somewhere down the line. Perhaps a poet. Right now I don't think I'm cut out for it - my stories are bad in characterisation and plot, my poems don't quite get there. Maybe I should just start a cult for the worship of words, instead. We could sing and chant constonants and vowels all day... :P
I do think my job will involve writing, though. I might become an academic. Art history, painting, music, all fascinate me. Linguistics... philosophy... guh, I cannot wait for university.
Or a lawyer? Sell my soul to the devil... That's what they want. I guess a law degree after my arts degree would give me some security, another language with which to describe the world. It would be nice to earn enough money in two days to support arts for the other five, instead of depending on the arts 24 hours a day in a screaming crazy messy life with hardship and getting cans of soup from the brotherhood and calling my mother and crying out for some money...
How romantic.
I guess if I wanted to be a writer, I should go full out and go for the experiences. For what can I write if it is not what I know?
28. How would you describe your writing style?
Undisciplined, evocative?, hopefully sensual, following a whim, joy in constonants and language language ... guh. *a teensy bit obsessed*
Words! jumbled together, clashing, mm, stumbling around, drunk together, high on life, trying to describe things while banging into walls.
I discovered a whole bunch of questions on frenchiphant's lj - thankyou, for them. I promise to play nicely and put them back, colour-coordinated in their sock-drawer, when I'm done...
1. If you write, is it difficult for you?
Starting to write is difficult, if it's a creative thing or an essay. I put pressure on myself to make it perfect and get freaked out. Writing for something where there's no expectation of perfection, like in a biology prac, or a private letter, or an email, or a journal entry - that flows effortlessly (except when I get stuck on describing a sensation, or a feeling - and the words just don't capture it).
2. Do you practice?
I write a lot - tend to write ridiculously long, self-scathing/joyous/bewildered/depressed/awestruck/hopeless/wondering lj entries. I hardly ever do 'creative writing' though.
3. Do you believe you have a natural talent?
People tell me I do. I think I'm eloquent. But then I have doubts about the validity of my subject matter - I don't know if I have anything to say that MUST be said, it's just all meanderings and ... and then I wonder if, even if I'm good at writing, am I good at 'writing'? I feel like, with my writing, sometimes people read it and are like what the hell? But in the other direction - I don't take it far enough. Re-reading my own writng, it sparks off millions of neurons in my brains - memories, smells, wistful, gorgeous feelings. I must be terribly boring to read it dry - not being me... I only really write to record those feelings but I don't feel as if I ever capture them, so they couldn't transfer to others completely...
4. Where does inspiration come from?
My life. I love recording it - things I've tasted, smelled, seen, felt, heard. Balance and craziness and gorgeousness. Writing about other people, trying to figure them out, I guess. I think of words, all the time, try to think how I would express something, random collections stick and make me smile.
5. When do you like to write the most?
Late at night.
6. Do you have problems with procrastination?
Hell yeah. It's ruining my life.
7. Do you tend to plan what you write before you start or just go head first? (If you do go head first, what influences those first few sentences the most - your surroundings, things you've read by others or crazy streams of thoughts and ideas?)
For essay writing, I've started to plan so that it's not just a big jumble of ideas and thoughts, and so that I can START with something. I have a tendency to want to research research so that I can know everything before I start writing, but you can't ever know everything, can you? Creative writing - I don't feel the need to know everything. I like the unkown, the feeling of discovery as I write. I haven't attempted a piece of creative writing with a plot for years - and those few that I did do once I decided that I would be a writer were full of projection anyway. I don't feel confident writing about other, imaginary people, doing other, imaginary things. It doesn't feel real, I feel like no one would like the characters or there would be something wrong with them...
So I write about feelings, sensations - the feeling of sitting on a train, swelling pink with lust for expression, with thoughts popping and wind blowing and people all around me... I have a fascination with trains - photos of them and thoughts while on them. They symbolise contemplation for me.
Another fascination is stasis - the idea of a jump stopped forever, or someone mid breath, things preserved and stopped and endless... I explained it in a piece of writing four years ago as a fist, in the rain, with lines around lines around lines around. It's like time stopping, and you know it will go on - it's the sensation of realising that you're alive and that you will forget it in a minute but you know it right now and oh my god you're alive...
I can't express it. This frustrates me. I'll go on trying, though. Writing feels like an endless circle, like a slinky, like childhood, and nostalgia, and endless layers of paint.
(I love commas. They're like a pause specifically designed for savouring.)
8. Is there such a thing as progress?
Progress? As in what? As in becoming a better writer, better able to express what it is that you would like to express? As in, with all of this new technology, are we having better lives? As in, can you compare the past and the present? As in, does the past exist at all? As in, does nostalgia consume me? (Why yes, it does. It's almost a physical thing... I think it should be a new sense.)
9. Do you like what you write?
Sometimes it sickens me. Sometimes it feels like if I let loose with advectives-as-verbs and weird syntax and thoughts, I'm just trying too hard. Sometimes it resounds within me and I think, I love these words, this language. Words, words, words. I love love love them. They are so precious - their individual sounds so sharp and evocative.
10. Does writing affect you emotionally?
I find if I start writing when I'm distressed, 2000 words or two hours later I should be okay. Occasionally reflection will hit me with reality and it will take me from elation to numbness. I cry, when I write, sometimes. I associate writing with strong emotion. If I am not feeling something, intensely, then what is the point of writing about my current state? Why not create feeling by doing something else - reading, painting, looking at pictures, playing with my ittle brother and sister, sitting helplessly on my bed?
I think I'm addicted to emotion. Huh.
And I wonder why I have the urge to draw when I'm not feeling anything in particular - I think it's because I don't feel that I'm good at it enough to express myself with it, don't find it kathartic.
11. How do you go about editing?
I often edit-as-I-go. Delete clunky words, clunky rhythms - or leave them in because even though I know they sound wrong, I like them for some perverse reason...
If it's a creative thing for school, I'll often get people to read it. I don't trust my own opinion.
12. Have you ever taken a class and did it help you/influence you at all?
I've done quite a few seminars and things - not much one on one stuff. It all makes sense when it's happening, but then it tends to fade away. Stuff like that would trigger writing I guess, but apart from that, not serve much function. I wonder if they've subconsiously influenced me at all...
13. Do you ever borrow?
I wrote a thing, in which I used a whole lot of t.s.eliott's words. It was fun. Sometimes I take a whole lot of spiky words from a book or a time period (e.g. my aztec thing four years ago - avocado, chocolate...) and put them together and then add words and I have a poem. That method involves lots of deleting...
14. Do you know a cure for writer's block?
Writing? Writing.
I don't do much writing which involves aiming for perfection, so i don't often encounter it. I would experience writer's block if I took the story that i have to write for school at the moment, sat down, and said, Okay, Catherine, write. But I'm ignoring it, so it's all good!
If I was to actually sit down and write it, and the words were not coming, I might try just writing really bad words for a while until I had a few small phrases that i liked and then word-souping from them. Or finding a whole lot of words and trying to write sentences, disjointed phrases, with them.
15. Are you ever afraid of writing?
Yes. I'm afraid that all of my old writing wasn't even able to be called writing, that I will reveal too much about myself, that my future, unkown writing will all be horrible, that I cannot write, that I will sit down and encounter something horrible in my mind and not be able to record it and it will just swell in my brain 'til I explode.
16. Does writing play evil little games with your self-esteem?
I think I've detailed them above...
I'm scared of being good at anything, or talented, and if I write something that everyone thinks is good, I hate it. I feel guilty, and like I'm not really good at it, like a fraud. I used to get a lot of help from my mother with schoolwork and things - really relied on her for discipline, and motivation, and editing, and opinions. I always felt guilty, like it wasn't me, like I could never come up with something as good or know as much or be as good as her. I got an A for a history essay, the other day, and my first instinct was to feel guilty - but then I realised that it was all me - I earnt that mark. Didn't take away the residual slimy, ill feeling.
17. Have you ever felt really proud of a piece you've written and do you continue to be proud about it?
A piece of writing that I wrote in year seven, about an aztec girl. I was terribly unconfident about it - it was so different to anything else in the writing competition at school that year. People laughed about it, I think, or thought that it was odd. It made me feel uncomfortable. I haven't read it for a long while...
But I like it. And I'm proud of it.
And another piece of writing, which I turned into a song. About dancing in the air with a close, close friend one evening.
18. Has someone/something in particular influenced your writing or your outlook on writing in general?
Not that I can think of... certain friends, who I talk about writing with, I guess, might have changed my mentality. I really don't know.
19. Do you display what you write, read it only to close friends or keep it secret?
I write something for the school competition every year. Anything else - and it's rare, if we're talking about things unconnected to lj - I tend to show my mum, and maybe a few friends... on lj, if I'm writing about something intensely personal, sometimes I filter it. Sometimes I can't bear to let anyone see something - it's too raw, too giving, I feel like it makes me completely powerless and prostrated. Sometimes I'll write an entry like that and then make it private two hours later once the emotions have dissipated a little...
20. Do you ever feel inadequate and, if you do, why and how so?
Detailed above...
21. For you, what makes the difference between a piece you're satisfied with and a piece you're not?
Wow, great question. I have no fucking clue...
Hrm.
Something crap - well, it would have no rhythm, wouldn't flow, would leave me with a feeling of 'eh.' Like - why did I write this? Who cares?
Or I would be incredibly frustrated because I would know the words weren't expressing what I meant them to. There was a clowns story (clowns was the topic that year...) and a story about two girls in an insane asylum - both of them were disjointed, didn't make sense to the reader, didn't have a logical progression of events, or clear character.
Something that I love when I'm reading is to have an experience. So I guess when I read my own writing I remember - and that's an experience. So my writing, when good, is probably rather crap to other people - but hopefully it evokes an experience of their own inside their minds... I wish that I could think like another person, and not react like me, see it from a different perspective, be someone else, share a mind, telepathy... the paranormal is so interesting. That's why Harry Potter fanfiction can be so great! Haha...
22. Do you look for help, accept help or find it hard to ask for help?
I don'd find it hard. Sometimes I find it difficult to accept help. It always has to be on my own terms - sometimes I'm just resistant. It depends on who the person is. If it's a friend, I know that I'll always listen because advice on writing from friends is rare. Mum on the other hand, if she comes up and starts pointing out faults, I will probably tell to fuck off. I have a weird thing about her helping me... if I want her hep, though, I'll ask her, and that's fine.
23. When is writing its most difficult?
When it has to be perfect. Then it's impossible...
24. Is there any part of the process you loathe in particular?
The anxiety of not knowing how other people experience it. I'm intensely curious...
25. Do you count on the approval or acceptance of others?
Yes. For most people, I wouldn't care what they thought, but for quite a few, I care intensely.
26. Do you consider writing a large part of your life?
I consider words a large part of my life. Whether or not they make it to paper is another thing...
27. Are you pursuing a career in writing?
I don't think I'll be an author... perhaps somewhere down the line. Perhaps a poet. Right now I don't think I'm cut out for it - my stories are bad in characterisation and plot, my poems don't quite get there. Maybe I should just start a cult for the worship of words, instead. We could sing and chant constonants and vowels all day... :P
I do think my job will involve writing, though. I might become an academic. Art history, painting, music, all fascinate me. Linguistics... philosophy... guh, I cannot wait for university.
Or a lawyer? Sell my soul to the devil... That's what they want. I guess a law degree after my arts degree would give me some security, another language with which to describe the world. It would be nice to earn enough money in two days to support arts for the other five, instead of depending on the arts 24 hours a day in a screaming crazy messy life with hardship and getting cans of soup from the brotherhood and calling my mother and crying out for some money...
How romantic.
I guess if I wanted to be a writer, I should go full out and go for the experiences. For what can I write if it is not what I know?
28. How would you describe your writing style?
Undisciplined, evocative?, hopefully sensual, following a whim, joy in constonants and language language ... guh. *a teensy bit obsessed*
Words! jumbled together, clashing, mm, stumbling around, drunk together, high on life, trying to describe things while banging into walls.