Why Am I Doing This?

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Ernest Hemingway

This quote has always resonated very strongly with me. Writing to me has always been the way in which I could express myself most honestly. Since I was little, I’ve taken to writing down the things I can’t say – and there seem to be so very many of those. I live inside a world of my creation and it isn’t always easy to come down from that cloud and accept what has always seemed the less appealing world around me. It’s always been very difficult to share that world with others and that’s part of the reason I started writing – there was so much there that I couldn’t hold it all inside. But even then, being the incredibly private person I am, I shied away from showing it to anyone, and still do. So, you may ask, what could possibly possess me to start a blog – a little corner of the Internet designed specifically to be seen by absolutely anyone and subject to all kinds of criticism? I don’t have an entirely clear-cut answer to that question. But I am willing to try and trace it out.

Even if I have trouble giving voice to the things that cross my mind, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have anything to say. Quite the contrary: in fact, lately I’ve taken to thinking that I have far too much to say and not enough people to say it to. And what better form of free expression is there than the Internet? It might not always be the friendliest place, but at least it provides an opportunity to put something out there and see what happens. I’ve known that I want to be a professional writer for a long time now. But there comes a point when that certainty just isn’t enough anymore – I have to know if the things that I have to say are worth writing down, if they’ll mean anything to anyone who reads them. Half the success of any writer is an avid and loyal audience. You can’t expect to make any kind of a difference if people don’t like what you write and, more importantly, if they’re not even willing to read it in the first place. Hence this little experiment. Are people interested in what I have to say? I guess I’ll find out.

In addition to that, lately I’ve been challenging myself more and more. As if that wasn’t surprising enough, I also found that I like it. So now I’m willing to push it another step further. My imagination and my rich inner world are the things that drive me to write in the first place, but if I’m not careful they will also be the things that hold me back. I cannot realistically expect to achieve my goal if I am afraid to let anyone see what I write. I’ve been told time and time again (mostly by my father who simply loves to bring me crashing back to reality) that as a writer you need a tough skin. And it’s true. Some of the best advice I’ve heard about writing is simply to write what you know. It seems glaringly obvious at first – how could you write what you don’t know? But once you sit down to write whatever it is you know it becomes much more difficult than just that. What you know isn’t always easy to get down in writing, for whatever reason that might be – inner demons, past experiences you’d rather not relive, thoughts you don’t want anyone else dissecting.  Writing is intriguing in the way it forces you to really delve inside your own mind, and sometimes find hidden pockets you didn’t know where there. But if you’re like me, you’ll find you don’t really have a choice – writing is a need rather than a hobby – so you’ll write those things down anyway. And once you’ve managed to get past all the reasons that would stop you from writing what you know, you have to face the added hurtle of showing it to someone else. Someone who does not live inside your head. Someone who doesn’t know all the misgivings you had putting all those thoughts or feelings out there for them to see. Someone who doesn’t know the incredibly personal space from which those words came.  In short, someone who has no idea what exactly it is they hold in their hands and such is free to judge, criticize, and condemn it as much as they like. It’s an incredibly scary thought, at least for me. I put a lot of thought and feeling into my words. I’m not exaggerating when I say that when someone rejects them, they reject me. In a lot of ways writing is not simply what I do; it’s who I am. But I also realize that if I’m serious about this, then I need a tougher skin. Here’s to building a tougher skin, layer by layer.

Lastly, the part of me that craves new experiences thrills at the thought of trying something new – and, what’s more, something with a slight risk to it. There is something so appealing about casting your thoughts out into the universe, without knowing where they will go or what waves, if any, they will make. Not to mention the creative freedom inherent in the very nature of a blog. Lately I’ve run into such a rut with my writing. Academic writing, while rigorous, can be so restricting, not to mention exhausting. I find that at the end of the day, when all I want to do is sit down and write about the things I want to, not have to, I simply don’t have the mental energy necessary. And trying your hand at a novel for the first time (somewhat naively and overly optimistically in my case) can be so overwhelming. There are so many little details that need to be in place before the writing can really flow. This gives me an opportunity to practice and to grow as a writer. And last but not least I’ll get to finally sit down and explore issues that are important to me. Writing is after all, a discovery. It’s the best way to find out exactly what you think about anything. And that’s the part that excites me the most.

I can’t really guarantee that you, dear reader, will always like what I have to write about. I can’t guarantee that it will entertain you, and I can’t guarantee that you’ll agree with it. But I do hope that it will at least make you think a little, maybe go places you hadn’t thought to go before. Maybe I’ll even catch your imagination, if I’m lucky. But I’d be happy if you simply joined me on this little adventure into the world of writing.