Writing about writing

The problem with the blank page is not that I have a blank mind and empty thoughts, but that I have so many thoughts that I do not know where to begin. The drive to write something worthwhile and personal and maybe something relatively profound has filled my mind for the past week at least. So instead of picking one of the many subjects that have been running around in my mind like (insert clever simile here), I am once again writing about writing.

I suppose if I analyze my entire writing process for you, unnamed and perhaps non-existent reader, it would be telling and personal enough for now. Plus, I suppose that a deeper relationship where one shares their secrets and pains sometimes take time, so I will let my relationship with this blogging world develop slowly and share with you a bit of surface drivel with just a peek into the pool of my psyche for now.

As I have already said, I think and rethink before I ever put anything onto the page, testing words and sentences, seeing what works well and what I should discard, and then I lose all of it because I never write it down. There is this fear in me I think, that if I put my thoughts to paper, make them physical and real, then I will suddenly find myself out. It is so human to want to "find yourself," to want to know who you are really, beneath the person you think yourself as, and find if you are something more or are just as fearful and weak as you think you are, or worse, that you are more terrible than you have ever thought up to the particular point of self discovery.

I am discovering that this is exactly what happens when I write or draw or really work on learning guitar. I see myself in the mirror of my work (or complete non-work aka laziness) and am a bit afraid of what I see there. The truth be told, I really am more boring, terrible, and weak than I think I am and am still discovering how much so.

I am afraid of doing what I long to do because I am afraid of failure AND success. I am afraid of never being able to do something I love well and am afraid that I can do and be and succeed. Why is this I wonder? But for whatever reason, there lies the deeper question of "why in the world am I so afraid that my success or my failure hinges on me?" Whatever fears and insecurities I have and no matter how little I think of myself, I am still thinking myself great to put the weight of my future accomplishments all on me. If I really determine to be disciplined in writing, disciplined in art, and disciplined in music there is not an immediate log & cliff formed in the distance for me to trip over and then fall headlong into the chasm of the death of all my hopes and dreams.

I need to determine to be faithful with the gifts and talents that I have been given and know that if the Father wills to use them for His glory and my good they will flourish or fade as He desires.

Ha, in my second attempt at public writing I have put words to feelings I have had for years by intending to start with "surface drivel." Ha. God knew this would be good for me.

Also telling is my constant editing as I write. If you ask any experienced writer how to write well the great majority of them would tell you to write whatever comes to mind, to let every thought you have flow to your fingers and onto the page, unhindered by any condemning thought from yourself or thought of what others might think. I like to think that I am independent, that I don't need the approval of others, that I could (if I wished) live exactly how I want and say, "screw the world" if they disagree with my liberated life. Well, I have a more confidant view of myself than is actually true. As I write things that are revealing my thoughts and fears I am simultaneously fearing what others will think of these personal revelations of mine.

So, to finish with a flourish... The beginning and end of anything is the hardest for me. This is where drawing a blank usually comes in, in my writing. I remember in both my English Comp. 1 & 2 classes I would be writing furiously to finish my paper an hour before class was to start only to be stuck in the last fifteen minutes with my concluding paragraph. I would sit there tapping on the table, chewing my nail, and typing gibberish before I would finally get a mental breakthrough in the last eight minutes and then frantically type to the finish not having time to stop to proofread. All that reminiscing said, I still have not come up with a way to finish.

This is where I usually give myself a mental pep talk or change the music I am listening to, to give me more inspiration. If that doesn't work I start freaking out a little and begin to think in incomplete sentences. "I could say... What about... Dang it, why can't I..." on and on and on. Then comes the mental cursing if I am really frustrated... ok just mental cursing if I am the least bit frustrated.

This is where I give way to the lame, half-hearted sentences that I am not really fond of just so I can be done, even if it won't end the writing as gloriously as I would have liked.

Writing is a learning process and I am finding that the more I do it, the better I like it and hopefully I will improve as well.