Step One: Sit Down At A Typewriter* June 19, 2007
Posted by charmingbutsingle in Advice People Give Me, Backstory, Random Musings on Life, Why I Write.trackback
Ed note: Edited for spelling. How typical of me to have spelling problems in a post about wanting to be a writer.
One of the really fantastic and equally awful things about blogging is that you have a record of your thoughts and experience. The lows and the highs. The hysterical and the downright creepy.
Fantastic because it gives me a chance to look back at how I deal with things and react to situations, for better or for worse. And awful because I realize how often I fall into ruts and get fed with things that really aren’t worth fretting over. I am my both my own best cheerleader and my own worst critic. And this is okay, I think, as long as I don’t build myself up too much or let myself fall too far down. A delicate balance. Something to strive for.
When I was in high school, I went through a month or so of being obsessed with Henry David Thoreau and “Walden.” Had we had MySpace back in, say, 1996, my quote would have been “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” It’s easy to think, when you are 16 or 17 and possibility seems to surround you, that you will do it all, try everything once, maybe twice for good measure. And it is just as easy to forget, when you are approaching 30, that this still exists and the possibility is there, if you look.
I always wanted to be a writer. But there is one moment that I remember, clear as day, when I knew I could be a writer. (And trust me, there is gulf between wanting and knowing.) I was in my junior year Honors English class and our assignment was to write a paper comparing a modern artistic work, be it a song, a movie, a painting, to the themes of transcendentalist writers like Thoreau. My paper centered on the songs of Counting Crows, because I was as obsessed with Adam Duritz as I was with Henry David.
I don’t remember what I wrote and I don’t have a copy of the paper, which is just as well because I’d just let my critical eye ruin an excellent memory and defining moment in life. I worked so hard on that paper, poring over the well-worn books of lyrics that came with my CDs, searching for the perfect phrase to express my generation’s soul searching. Never had I worked so diligently on a school project.
Of course the computer at my high school ate the paper, so I spent all night reworking it. (I once had a journalism professor who, when she would see me hunched over my computer, brow furrowed, looking over a printout of a story or column covered in red ink and copy editing marks, would remark that “writing is rewriting.” I am certain this phrase was born to keep editors from being burned like witches at the stake and/or because some poor soul found his or her masterpiece lost to technology or whatever they had before computers. Like fire. Or flood.) I was so proud of my paper that I turned it in a day early so that I wouldn’t fidget and ruin it. My English teacher encouraged me to take the extra day, but I refused. “It is finished,” I told her, like I’d just written some great masterwork instead of a three-page essay on a band I liked for my Lit class.
She saw something in my confidence and words that day. And she read this essay to each one of her classes, including my Honors class, which was full of girls I thought had more talent than I did. I kept my head down while she read each painstakingly prepared phrase aloud, just praying that they didn’t laugh or roll their eyes.
I remember everything about this moment – my teacher’s bright red hair and chunky jewelry, the rhythm she gave the words as she read, the dusty parquet floor squares of the first-floor classroom Seventh Hour where I sat, with my back to the window, pride welling up in my chest and a tear in the corner of my eye. I never thanked her properly for this three or four minutes, when I went from wanting to be a writer to knowing that it was in me somewhere, eclipsed by self-doubt and immaturity.
Maybe it is peeking its head out here, in these posts. Perhaps it will show its head in another format at another time to another audience. Could be that one day I will be tapped out, potential reached, possibility gone.
I wonder if one day, years from now, when all of this dating and nondating is in the past, I will look back on these words and stories and laugh or cry.
Probably both.
*Yes, this post title is from the quote: “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein,” from Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith.
I absolutely love this post. I have a similarly favorite memory of an essay I wrote in college, when I decided, as a freshman, to take an upper level poetry course (arrogant little bugger that I was). I took my first paper with a 92 scrawled across the top to my high school AP English teacher as a thank you for teaching me to survive in higher education amidst a public high school that accepted mediocrity.
My writing peaked when I was about 12, I think. That or this is some hellafied writer’s block.
I feel the same and had similar experiences in both high school and college. Writing is the second love that I’ve given up on in my life and I’m working my way back to it, albeit very slowly.
I also had similar experiences in school and at uni, and went so far as to send out a few freelance things and get a few pennies in return. But then I started an actual writing job, and all the fun went out of it.
I’m starting to love writing again through blogging - it’s much more satisfying to write several hundred words about the nonsense which swims around my head than it is to write several hundred words about engineering. And there’s still a bit of me which hopes one day somebody else will read my nonsense and decide to pay me for it!!!
Who knows, maybe someday we’ll all have books on Amazon?!
I would love to be a writer except for two things…I’m not diciplined enough to sit down and actually write something and I suck at wrtiting. lol Hey…I know my limitations. lol
I love CC too!
I am seeing them this summer in MN!
So, what are you doing about this gift you have besides blogging? Let me introduce you to another aspiring writer “good at getting better” http://nextgr8twriter.wordpress.com/. I really do enjoy your posts and hope you can take your writing to the next step if that is what you want.
Yes, rewriting. This: “When I was in high school, I went through a month or so of being obsessed with Henry David Thoreau and “Walden.” Had we had MySpace back in, say, 1996, my quote would have been “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” It’s easy to think, when you are 16 or 17 and possibly seems to surround you, that you will do it all, try everything once, maybe twice for good measure.” Probably was meant to say this in the 2nd sentence:
“It’s easy to think, when you are 16 or 17 and possibility seems to surround you, that you will do it all, try everything once, maybe twice for good measure.”
Sorry about that C. Really bad habit. I read the posts. Also N.B. marrow possibly meant something a bit different for HDT than we think of it today. After all, most well turned out silver services of the period likely had several utensils for marrow extraction. It was a common and much sought after edible food & fat of the time. (See, not even any maths in that one, right?) Cheers & Good Luck, ‘VJ’
The teacher who taught me to write was my sophomore english teacher in high school. He used bright red fountain pens and would comment so much the paper would practically drip ink. He was so critical, it made me angry… and made me want to work harder. He would work with me through five or even seven drafts on each paper, helping me make the writing better and helping me understand why. He taught me more about writing than anyone before or since (my own blogging, of course, a great exception to that).
My one great regret was never properly thanking him for the effort he put into me, what he taught me. Have you ever thought of looking up that old teacher and thank her the way you wanted to?
Pursue your dream, it’s never too late!
Writing was never really an option for me, though for a long time I figured I’d be a diarist who only achieves fame and fortune for her heirs when her journals are published after her death (ditto for the poetry - I figured I’d pull an Emily Dickinson there). Then I gave some of my poems to an editor friend, and she actually PUBLISHED them. In, like, a real book. That people pay real money for. But it came too easily, so it didn’t feel real. It wasn’t until I wrote my first serious theology paper, thirty pages of sexual ethics, and one of the professors who read it inquired about the possibility of publishing my master’s thesis when I write it that I started to realize that I am what I always wanted to be. I am a writer.
[...] but single has a post I really relate to about writing. It’s a great little significant story, and she tells it so [...]
until the book is written and publisher sorted, there is blogging. A great way of looking at your style, your voice & your developement.
and owning the phrase ‘I am a writer’ is the beginning. keep going
My name’s Kris. I’m seventeen years old, I’m a freshmen in college, and you are now officially my new hero, lol.
I was searching the internet looking for the quote that you used for your title (I’d come across it once, and it stuck with me, for he puts what being a writer is into words perfectly, haha) and I found your blog and read it.
I had a similar experience when I was in high school so can totally relate.
Oh, and once I saw you wrote your paper on Counting Crows, I HAD to comment you and let you know how awesome you are,
after all, Counting Crows is the most amazing band EVER!
Check out the version of “Round Here” performed at the Orpheum Theatre in Boston. Though the song still has the basic version of “Round Here,” he sings with another set of completely different lyrics and his voice holds so much emotion in it.
It inspires me when I write.
Maybe it’d do the same for you.
=]
I stumbled across your blog via someone’s blog roll and because I hate starting stories in the middle, I started reading your blog from the beginning - feels like I am reading a novel (almost). Part of my draw to your blog is because I grew up in the Mississippi Gulf Coast and went to school at Ole Miss, so reading your writing is…nostalgic perhaps - not sure of the right word. Anyways, I particularly loved this post and just thought that I would leave a comment even though I am like a year behind.
So, I just realized I commented on the wrong post. Classic. I meant to leave this comment on the post about your dad and his love of music.