The Voices in my HeadThe Inevitable Place I Come to as a Writer.
October 13th 2006 23:34
So desperate to grab onto something to be good at, I latched onto writing at an early age. I would much rather write to someone than to have a conversation with them. My mind doesn't make the connection between what I am thinking and what ends up spewing out of my mouth like verbal vomit. Writing is a release of everything negative and positive in my life. I have been told often that I am a good writer...they lie.
I am 34 years old. I am running out of time to decide what I want to be when I grow up...for christ sake, I am almost there...
The place I always come back to, regardless, is the place I am at now. I want to give up. I know, -(despite what others say, those others being my friends, aunts, mother, husband, you know. The ones who are legally bound to tell you that!)- that I do not have great talent. I'm not one of the stupid who professes to be the next great writer and lament over rejection slips as they pile up in the mailbox. I know.
The thing is...it's all I have ever wanted to do. How does someone relegate the passion of their life to a very lonely hobby? The fact is, right now, I am in college pursuing my first degree, in nothing other than writing. So far, I have a perfect 4.0, and that doesn't make me any more convinced I am doing the right thing. It makes me want to scream.
I am paying all this money to go to school and to get better at writing than I am now, -( if that is even possible. Can talent really be learned?) The perfect A's on every assignment make me want to kill someone. I want to scream...
Even more pathetic, as I am thinking out loud here, is that I don't have a particular voice, yet. I am 34, and I have no idea what it is I'd really like to say....
Where the hell does this insanity come from, the desire to write? I asked a friend recently, "Why would God or whatever that be, give someone the desire without an equal measure of talent to do something about it?"
This is my darkest hour as a "writer". I hate when this strikes and it makes me wonder if this is just a normal part of the writing process...or is it the place that the untalented come to? A place that good writers need a passport to get to?
I am 34 years old. I am running out of time to decide what I want to be when I grow up...for christ sake, I am almost there...
The place I always come back to, regardless, is the place I am at now. I want to give up. I know, -(despite what others say, those others being my friends, aunts, mother, husband, you know. The ones who are legally bound to tell you that!)- that I do not have great talent. I'm not one of the stupid who professes to be the next great writer and lament over rejection slips as they pile up in the mailbox. I know.
The thing is...it's all I have ever wanted to do. How does someone relegate the passion of their life to a very lonely hobby? The fact is, right now, I am in college pursuing my first degree, in nothing other than writing. So far, I have a perfect 4.0, and that doesn't make me any more convinced I am doing the right thing. It makes me want to scream.
I am paying all this money to go to school and to get better at writing than I am now, -( if that is even possible. Can talent really be learned?) The perfect A's on every assignment make me want to kill someone. I want to scream...
"CHALLENGE ME! MAKE ME BETTER! MAKE ME BELIEVE I CAN DO IT!"
Even more pathetic, as I am thinking out loud here, is that I don't have a particular voice, yet. I am 34, and I have no idea what it is I'd really like to say....
Where the hell does this insanity come from, the desire to write? I asked a friend recently, "Why would God or whatever that be, give someone the desire without an equal measure of talent to do something about it?"
This is my darkest hour as a "writer". I hate when this strikes and it makes me wonder if this is just a normal part of the writing process...or is it the place that the untalented come to? A place that good writers need a passport to get to?
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Comment by Homer Joyce
Firstly, if, as you contend, you don’t have a particular voice, then I’ll be stuffed if I know what I just read in this post …
More coming …
Homer
Comment by Homer Joyce
Re: giving up.
Firstly. Don’t.
My sister decided to become a fine artist and leave the corporate world in her mid 40s. She left the corporate world, went back to it, and is now pursuing fine art part-time … but art is her only real passion in life … She’s just addicted to the lifestyle which comes with earning $2000/week in the corporate world. Fair enough. Who wouldn't be?
I’ve lived as a boho most of my life, so when it comes to talking about the struggle of an artist and how many times the artist feels like giving up … I reckon I’m qualified to speak on the matter … Less than two months ago I was living on the streets, wondering how in the hell I was going to write without a pen.
But I’ve had these types of discussions with my sister, because she would ask questions like: What made you keep going?
I’d say to her, words to the effect of:
There are various epiphanies you have as a writer. They are usually just around the corner from the dark, bleak moments when you’re about to give up …
Firstly, I nearly gave up writing my first novel. Especially after I finished it, and realised it was a piece of shit.
Going to writing college was my saving grace. Regardless of how much natural ability I had as a writer, and how much passion I had for it … I had to admit to myself that writing was a craft that I had to learn by the age-old method of bloody hard work. Someone said writing was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
There’s a famous football identity in Melbourne called Ron Barrassi. He saw so many talented footballers come to play under him. A lot of them didn’t succeed, yet the less-talented ones did. He said one day, ‘Talent comes out of the eye of your father’s cock. I don’t give a shit how talented you are. Can you train hard? Do you have the desire to get the best out of yourself?’ … etc …
More coming later …
Homer …
Comment by Ash
Australian Traveller
Flashes of memories
I agree - I feel I am in exactly the same boat as you. Put me in any conversation and I stumble along like an idiot, let me write and I can go on for ages, even if it`s drivel. At the age of 27 I have been dodging the real world for the near 10 years it`s been since I left High School. I have watched all my peers move into the normal little monotonies that make up life - every one of them knowing exactly what it was they wanted to do since I met them. And I have finished my degree, moved into another course to study something else and then came to the realisation that the one passion that I have had through all of it was words. Hopefully the course that I will be starting next year won`t just prove to be another sentence to add to my CV, but the start of my own little bit of monotony.
I watched a movie the other night about a great writer who loses his will to write after his wife passes away. The thing that he talks about that sticks in my mind the most is that we are all crazy people. Little or nothing but writing will satisfy us and if that`s what we are meant to do then that is what we must do, there is nothing else to satisfy us.
So let`s hope as we both embark on these studies of ours we learn to perfect our craft and find some sort of constant 'challenge' that will keep us happy!
Best of luck
Ash
Comment by Ash
Australian Traveller
Flashes of memories
- your words are very inspiring. I only found out about this site through a Careers website and originally signed on to do a blog on travel writing to get some writing practise. However, there is so much more that everyone on here has to say and its really encouraging to be surrounded by a community of people who can keep motivating you. Great to know that these feelings are normal, especially when surrounded by people who don't understand!!
Ash
Comment by The Voices in my Head
The Voices in my Head
Thank you for the compliment and likewise. I do agree with the segment of film you mentioned, so much and I appreciate your sharing it with us.
In regards to the mentality of writers, there are some absolutes.
The first being, in our own minds, we will never be good enough.
The second being, another writer always is and we wish to have their talent, while they are wishing for someone else's.
and finally, no matter what else we may try, as you mentioned from the film, we will always, ALWAYS come back to our one true love, the written word.
I have become inspired to stretch myself as a writer, to force myself to do more, to be better, and to grow since joining Orble.
Writers are often so influenced and/or limited by their environments.
For instance, I have always lived in smalltown Indiana, where the fanciest word heard is, well, the word fancy. I have struggled to find my writing voice as a result of this environment I have always been in. There is a great fear in me to take off and write the way I truly think and feel because I fear what everyone I know will think.
What if these people, my neighbors and my friends, who have always thought of me as being talented, read a published work, don't like my true writing voice and I lose my only fans? *shudder*
Frightening and bold move to pursue writing but we are insane enough to do it...
Good luck and push past whatever stops you.
Come back,
Voices~
Comment by Homer Joyce
There is an Australian film called Sorrento Moon … It is about a writer who lives overseas (in England). She writes and publishes a very successful novel … Only problem is, it is about her home town and the people in it (including her family) … The film is about her returning home for a visit after becoming successful (They could have called the film ‘When the Shit Hits the Fan’ …
I think Eddie Vedder’s lyrics to Elderly Woman Over the Counter in a Small Town are the most concise précis of the writing and fame gig I have ever read.
It contains one of my all-time favourite lines:
I changed by not changing at all …
Whether Eddie meant it or not, I read it as: the real him just came out of his shell (after he forgot about what everyone else would think about him if he was himself, or true to himself … And didn’t Eddie find his voice? In a big way …
Homer …
Comment by Ash
Australian Traveller
Flashes of memories
Good points taken on board from you both. I am the writer EVERYONE wishes they had the talent of....and wish they had the modesty of too! haha!
I agree that writers are influenced by their environment and I feel that`s what my block is at the moment. No one that I know sees the need or importance for writers (as they all crawl into bed at night with their latest John Grisham or JK Rowling book in hand) - they think it`s something that the dregs of society do. "You must do something substantial in your life, something with which you can hold your head high, like a Doctor or a Lawyer. Writing is for people with no ambition" Yawn...blah...blah. And by being surrounded by these sorts of characters I find that I have no challenge and it becomes draining to write anything. Then you start to write so that you appeal to those people so that there is some sort of justification in what you do and you don`t write from the heart anymore, but rather from the head. ARGH! Blast the curse of the writer - are we destined to battle with ourselves like this forever?
I don`t ever want to be one of those people who tries to sound creative and live the life because it seems romantic. As you say though we are our own worst critics so nothing will ever be as good as someone elses.
I like what you said about Eddie`s quote. It sounds just the sort of challenge that I need to set myself, not changing at all and having the courage to write about what I want to say and not about what I think others want to read. That`s the magic of writing - once you have chosen the words and put pen to paper they are there forever, not like speech where once the words come out of your mouth they disappear into the air and that`s it they are gone.
Hmmmm this is all very mind-boggling stuff isn't it?
Ash
Comment by The Voices in my Head
The Voices in my Head
There you go...we writers need to stick together. Be true to yourself...at the end of your life, have no regrets about your art. Another absolute code we should all live by.
Come back,
Voices~
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
So I admire those actors who spend hours a day practising, and perform their experimental theatre for tiny audiences, or those writers who pile up the novels and short stories, and then burn them...
Comment by The Voices in my Head
The Voices in my Head
This is the place I have come to, what you have just described in your comment. I have chosen to write for the sake of writing. I had an opportunity to make this blog a domain site and have chosen not to. If I feel like writing, I will. If I don't, I will anyways. But I don't want to worry about the popular list and other constraints. I just want to write for the pleasure of it.
Come back,
Voices~