I really have no idea how to write. This saddens me, because reading is one of the things I enjoy the most. It seems amazing to me that someone can take the day-to-day experiences of their life, decompose them into their constituient parts, and create something that transcends their single experience. How do you take the joys and sorrows of even an exceptional life and turn them into distilled essenses ready for consumption by the masses?
My life and attitudes have been pretty significantly affected by the things I read. I grew up reading a lot; I read less now than I did, but probably still more than average. I don't think I've written anything longer than 10 pages in my life...and that was a paper on Crime and Punishment, which hardly counts. With the least bit of ego possible, let me say that it's rare for me to attempt a mental task and fail at it so completely. Yet fail I have.
When I look at any writers I admire, I'm amazed by their ability to craft a story, to take the ebb and flow of character interactions and pithy dialogue and turn it into a tapestry of events and feeling. Sure, I know the words; I can even understand some of why it's so evocative. But like the trapped fly is unable to see the glass of the window, I can't break free of the formulaic parrotry of my betters.
I suspect it's something to do with my emotional distance. This line of thought was brought on, oddly enough, by watching an episode of Glee. I don't like sharing my feelings; I don't like being "open". I suspect that none of my writing is ever really honest for that reason. I'm smart enough to see the subtext in what I write, and so I scrub it clean and sanitize it until no one can see any residue of my true feelings. The irony is that I think I've had enough experiences to write about...but they're too personal, they carry too much of my very soul in them for me to risk sharing that with others... so I clutch them close, like dying embers, greedy for the last bit of warmth I can suck from the fading memories.
I am pretty self-aware. I don't fear writing because it may reveal unpleasant truths about me. I know exactly how terrible of a person I am, and I've made my peace with that. I fear writing because I think if other people know too much about me, I lose something in their eyes. This may or may not be true; it strikes me as irrational...surely everyone has a darkness inside them? It doesn't matter, I'm still paralyzed.
Maybe writing about this did help; I'm not sure I could have admitted it was fear that held me back when I started this post.
