Time To Write Again

I used to write a lot.

It started with yellow and black journals, filled for writing practice in my two student home school.  However, I didn’t always enjoy writing there, where the latest grammatical concept or spelling word didn’t necessarily come easily.

But then there were the ‘side notebooks,’ created for pleasure during quiet time. Filled with pictures of stick figures and scribbles, history facts gathered from Liberty’s Kids, and ideas that could not be forgotten. My deepest, darkest secrets. The feelings that I didn’t necessarily want out, but which needed to find a place in. Writing was their way of doing that, my why of figuring, of learning when I didn’t know how.

Notebooks graduated to documents on a laptop when I was twelve and Mom trusted my typing skills. I was absolutely thrilled. Now it wouldn’t take so long to get my thoughts out, and maybe I’d actually finish something. You see, my childhood scrawling never really developed in the notebook and I was quite disappointed, since I was supposed to become an author as soon as possible.

Now when I look back, my memories are filled with words, in addition to the photographs and pictures that most people have. And sometimes, those words are what create the pictures and the videos inside my head. I am grateful for writing, and I love the words I have.

~~~

I’ve been staring at documents–empty, full, partially filled–for the past three and a half months. Two papers, weeks of journals, a dozen show responses, half a million emails (and I’m not kidding!), four write-an-essay-exams, some devised and revised theatre, and one script analysis later, and I leave semester five with lots of written proof that I was there. It’s maybe more akin to the yellow and black journal I once held in grade school, yet it’s still writing. Writing still helps me in the same ways it always did, and through it, I am able to help.

But it’s time to really write again. Here. And in the notebooks and Word Documents, waiting to be filled. I like to think of schoolwork as just a practice for the real things yet to come.

It’s time to unload the stories, which have been stored up in this tired brain for the last three months. It’s time to reflect and process and remember. It’s time to write again.

It’s time to write again. I think it every morning when my “wake up reminder” rings for the tenth time, and I climb out of the covers reluctantly.

It’s time to write again, I say, crossing off one more thing from the ever growing list, and leaving an empty space for it.

It’s time to write again, I dream in rehearsal, in class, and while writing those papers.

But when I do, the words feel stiff. I press backspace much more than enter. I am tentative, shy, and utterly unsure. But why?

Was the child with her scrawling and facts and feelings? Was the young girl who could type for the first time?

Nope. If I remember correctly, there was very little hesitation, or none at best, in those writers’ hands. And that’s how the stories came to be, rough and awkward as they once were, but still they were there.

And with time, the words sweetened. But only with time spent making more words.

So it’s time to write again. For better or for worse.

~~~

This post is in commemoration of my four year blog anniversary! That’s right–I first started writing in this corner of the internet on December 18th, 2010. I used to write a lot more back then, but I like to think of this as my writing space, nonetheless. This post is also my re-inaugeration back into the blogging and writing world, after my accidental hiatus over the last three and a half months. Expect to hear more from me over the coming weeks! 

Write Something

Write something. 

I see the faithful instruction written in the chalkboard of my head throughout the day. On the to-do list of my brain when I wake up, the sharp music of my phone alarm decorating the air, piercing the assignment into me melodiously. As people pass me books, hardcovers and soft covers, written, finished, published, and bound, I punch in one dollar books & CDS and wonder when my name will ever be in print.

Write something. 

It plays in my head like a melody. Over morning bible readings and breakfast and as I check through Facebook and email before work. It’s the song only I can hear when the radio plays praise music at the till, while I make change from tens and twenties and stuff shirts and socks, books and blenders into plastic bags.

Write something. 

Says the Voice in My Head. He calls again and again,but I travel far away.

 

I watch a movie, stuffing butter dripping popcorn into my face. Log-in to Facebook 21 times a day, surf through the statuses and links, all full of words, and pictures, which they say can tell a thousand. A friend texts me and I text back, amassing countless paragraphs back and forth across the kilometres. I even open the red book with the gold letters, dearly treasured and desperately falling apart as it is, and read that word.

Anything to avoid, sometimes. Anything to get away from what I really love best.

 

Write something. 

The wall clock in the store clicks. The time on my phone has changed. The digital stove clock shows 5:17 PM, instead of 8:36 AM, when I arrive home, exhausted, drained from three hundred conversations, too many transactions, a multitude of messes to clean, and a few f-words thrown in my direction.

Write something? How could I? Can’t you see I don’t have any room right now?

 

I slide into the car once more, reminding myself to drive safely, as per my usual driving ritual. A few intersections and left turns and right turns later and I’m at my friend’s. We have a meeting and fondue and games, sprinkled with laughter, joy, and discussion.

Write something, I hear it again.

Well, I’m kind of busy right now, in case you didn’t notice. And I don’t have my laptop and it would be socially inappropriate, even if I did, I counter briskly in my head, while laying down a card for Apples to Apples.

Write something, the Voice persists, knowing fully that I know full well that He meant later when I’m at home.

But I’m even more exhausted when my hands hit the computer keys at 10:47 PM, and my warm bed is a better welcome to me than an empty computer screen.

 

Write something. I read the to-do list once more as my alarm sounds even on my day off, Friday.

Yeah, well, it is my day off so I probably should, I think as I lazily pull my hair up out of its curled mess and wander into the kitchen for my morning ritual of tea.

 

Write something. 

We sit across from each other, sipping drinks–he has an iced coffee and I’ve ordered a London Fog–and talking, laughing even, about this craft we call writing.

“I think you have to discipline yourself to do it,” he says eventually, after we’ve nearly exhausted the subject, just as I’ve felt exhausted by it in the past.

And he’s right, I know. Oh, I know.

Write something. I hear it again as we talk about other things and again on my ride home and then again when I think on my afternoon over another cup of tea at home.

 

So now I’m writing something. Finally stepping up and listening to the music. Letting it flow out from within me and become my own.

I hope to become the discipline we spoke of today, though I know it will be hard. I hope to write many more things in the coming weeks and months and years. I hope I can learn to always get back up even after I’ve given up.

Write something. 

I know the journey is not over.

I’m Back!

Sorry for the lack of posts, replies, and comments to other blogs over the last two weeks. I’ve been busy acting in two different plays, the last of which closed last night. So now I’m back with several ideas for more posts! I promise to reply to your comments ASAP and check your blogs as well.

The First Chapter

I’ve never liked writing first chapters. I always find it a challenge to know what to say and then, while I’m mulling over that challenge in my head, I get tired of what I am doing and long for the later, more exciting chapters that I’ve already thought up in my head. The problem is though that you can never skip over a first chapter for even if you were to jump in and call it “Chapter Two” it would still be the first chapter and you’d still have the same troubles of thinking of what to say. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet but a first chapter by any other name would be just as grueling to write.

You see, I think that the first chapter must be an introductory into everything and I always find that, no matter how hard I try, I never introduce the characters or circumstances fully enough. I remember feeling this most intensely at the age of 7 when I decided to start a diary for the first time. For some reason, I thought that I really needed a full introductory to begin with so I started with the day I was born. I had very little details of that day of course, as I don’t really remember being born. Thus came the end of my diary writing career (until I picked it up 2 years later, that is.)

Now, a full introduction of EVERYTHING that has happened thus far would be bad enough if that were the only thing that you had to do. But alas, it is not. A good writer must also draw their readers in. Of course, this doesn’t apply for diary writing but for a novel or a blog it is quite important. I remember when I started story writing when I was 12, I had much trouble with this one. Even if I got the introductions off well enough, I never felt that they were interesting or eye-catching enough to be published. Therefore, I started many novels but only finished about 2 in a 4 year period. Even now, with the book I am writing which I have been working on for 3 years and which I think will one day be published, I have gone through countless revisions over the first chapter and have just barely gotten past it. Oh how those first chapters annoy me! Seriously, I think that if anything turned me away from writing (if anything ever could) it would be the writing of chapter one. Oh how I loathe it!

And now here I am, rambling on about how much I abhor first chapters simply to fill this first chapter of my blog. I haven’t introduced myself very much at all (besides the fact that I hate first chapters) and whether this has been interesting or not, well, I’ll let you be the judge of that. All I can say in explanation for myself is that I am a little bit weird at times but never fear…I already have some great ideas for the rest of my blog posts! I won’t always be this crazy/boring/complaining/strange (or whatever you think this post was.) And besides, everyone has to start somewhere!

Elizabeth