Warning: brief references to Depression and Anxiety
A lot of the time, when I write, it's not so much a choice as an exorcism.
(Metaphorically, ofc 😅 )
Don't get me wrong - I love writing.
But sometimes it's the case that, if I don't do it, these words are gonna rattle around my head and drive me to distraction.
Not necessarily in a bad way. It's just... they gotta come out, y'know?
Blogging takes a lot of time and work.
I don't wanna be one of those 'poor me, blogging is so difficult' bloggers, because at the end of the day, if I didn't love it, I could find plenty of other ways to spend my time.
But bloggers do a whole lot more than you might think.
'Well I wanted something better manI wished for something new
And I wanted something beautiful
And wish for something true'
- The Foo Fighters, Wheels
You know when you're trying to write something specific, but things just won't quite click?
Like, the thing you're trying to say refuses to come together - you might get close, but you won't get there. You can't quite manage to get the concept across, to communicate what it is you're trying to communicate.
Like... you can feel the thing, lurking in a corner of your brain, trying to free itself. But it just can't quite make that leap.
...That's one of the most irritating feelings you can have when writing.
Or at least, that's what it feels like to me.
There's a special kind of frustration - as a writer - when the words WON'T GO WHERE THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO!
I'm used to an existential crisis or two in my life. I usually have at least one a week.
(And the more naive among you probably think I'm joking, or exaggerating in some way. *laughs in hysterical Queer millennial*)
But one of the few things I've never doubted is my purpose - reading, and writing.
...But whether to fulfil that purpose?
What fulfilling that purpose looks like? Whether that purpose means anything, in the grand scheme of things? Whether I'm destined to fail in that purpose? Why this is my purpose? Whether we are all doomed to meaninglessness in a universe that dissolves into entropy, and if that is the case, then whether writing some silly little poems or stories is actually worth anything...
...OK. I think you get the gist.
My work-in-progress (WIP) looks nothing like it used to.
I started These Ghosts of Ours - which I hesitantly call a novel - an embarrasingly long time ago, as a teenager.
I've actually probably been working on it for half my life at this point, although I've had massive breaks of years when I didn't do anything on it at all because my life was imploding in various ways, shapes, and forms. 😅
(If I'm lucky I may finish These Ghosts of Ours by the time I'm 100! Woo!)
I've been writing a lot of poetry lately -
(mainly over on Medium, but don't worry - it all gets cross-posted here on Dora Reads eventually, I promise!)
- And it led to me thinking (as I do,) about the Point of View (POV) in poetry.
See, the 'I' in poetry is called the 'speaker' - because that's the person who's speaking.
But the speaker is not always the same as the poet.
When I tell people about my various craft projects - weaving, embroidery, cross-stitch - they're always like: 'You must have so much patience!'
But here's the thing - I don't.
I am so impatient. I want things done yesterday, preferrably in triplicate and wrapped with a bow.
No, I don't have any patience...
What I have is the ability to see the progress of the piece - however slow that progress may be.
Seeing it creeping into a mode of 'becoming' lets you know you're on the right track.
You're the only one of you.
( *Starts mentally singing ME! by Taylor Swift and Brendon Urie: 'I'm the only one of me! Baby, that's the fun of me!...'* Lol.)
Hooman-bean-brains are one of the most complex things in the known universe (I know, right? We're special!) and yours is just that: yours.
No-one else's brain will ever work in exactly the same way as yours does.
We may come to the same conclusions or think along the same lines as someone else - but at the end of the day our brains are ours alone: entirely unique.
Wanna see how far you can run? Wanna train to run a marathon or a 5k or whatever it is running-people do?
Find a tree.
There's a lot of writing advice out there. Like, a lot.
So much so in certain online spaces that sometimes you wonder if anyone's not writing about writing.
But then, I'm writing a blogpost for a sub-series called 'The Writer Diaries' so I'm clearly standing in a glass house and holding a rock, about to lob it over my head. 😅
A lot of the writing advice I've seen around on the *waves hands* general interwebs lately has been about writing routines.
Which wouldn't be a problem - writing routines help a lot of people.
Except more than a few of them have given me the general impression of 'OMG if you don't have a writing routine then you're writer-ing wrong!'
And? Honestly? F**k that.
So weird.
"Holy sh**!"
These are the words I've just written on paper. Hand-written, in ballpoint pen, in my multi-coloured Crayola notebook (all the cool kids have them! 😉😎)
They're words I've given to one of the characters from my Work in Progress (WIP), Dan, as he realises something ground-breaking that makes everyone look at the situation entirely differently.
...It's a sentiment I fully endorse, because I have no clue where this plot twist came from.
And, with wide eyes, my only statement at this moment can only be an echoed, 'Holy sh**.'
(Only I can't swear because my mother, so it was more like 'Holy...' and then trailing off.)
(Warning: this post discusses Coronavirus/Covid 19)
On a personal level, January sucked. Bad.
My beautiful Nan got Covid, and combined with her other health problems, despite the fact that she had very few symptoms, we nearly lost her.
There are very few things more distressing than watching someone you love slowly fade away via video link.
Honestly? If you're STILL not taking Coronavirus seriously, you can fuck the hell off.
And, dearest nerdlets, you know how upset I have to be to swear without censoring myself.
I really wanna delete a few letters and add *s, but I'm not gonna, cos despite the fact that I'm a nice well-brought-up Welsh girl, that's how annoyed I am, and how much you suck if you're one of the selfish people who still isn't taking precautions.
There's a couple of random things about writing that I've realised lately while working on my Work-In-Progress (WIP.)
I dunno whether this is me becoming more self-aware of my patchwork writing process -
(I write in snippets and then attempt to stick them together... with varying results)
- or whether everyone knows/has realised these things and I'm just now catching up (let me know!), but I figure'd I'd blog about them anywho! 😅
(Warning: this post briefly discusses overthinking and Anxiety/Depression)
In its previous life, my WIP, written by teenage-Cee over a decade ago, was melodramatic as f**k.
As in, there were kidnappings, and murders, and guns, and a secret child, and... if you can think of a plot-twist, it was probably in there. Plus a few more for luck.
And while the current version of These Ghosts of Ours is much, much, less ballistic, the memory of that previous version has left me constantly questioning the emotion-y bits and plot developments.
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| Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay |
