Writing ... and Work

Posted 06 October 2008 

Well, don't let my posts July onwards belie you ... They were written when my mind was somewhat in a traumatic state ... It is still in a traumatic state, but point is, I have reached the zenith of my frustrations and ride the wave to the shore of something familiar and comfortable, to the person I recognize as my old self ...

So, the question is, was I not myself all this while? .... More importantly, since when have I "lost" myself? ... Probably that is what people need to think when they watch Lost ... I am a master of stating the f**king obvious ... I have stopped watching Lost since the finale of Season Two ... And I swear, I did not know that Evangeline Lilly is/was romantically linked to that Hobbit guy ... It makes me think I may have a fighting chance with Josh Holloway ... Erm, can we move on? ....

Well, I suppose when my new job, which is writing for a newspaper, took hold of my life for the first few weeks, I became lost for words when it came to my blogs .... Undoubtedbly, I could still write, or else I won't get paid ...

Then, today, it becomes crystal clear to me as to what sort of writer I am ....

There are writers, and I think a lot of people would agree with me, that are so super-talented ... It comes to them like a dream unbeckoned ... Hardly conscious of their own ability and skill, they can conjure up a multitude of images with writing so subtle and sublime ....

Then of course there are writers who take night courses on creative writing, while at the same time have utterly mundane day jobs ... And I'm pretty sure some, if not most, are actually renowned writers ... I, of course, have not read enough to know ...

Point is, there are many types of writers ...

Then there's me ... I don't know which category of writers I fit in ... Actually I'd rather not fit in any category ... And for me, writing is as much about coming from the heart, as it is with the mind ... Actually, maybe that is so true of a lot of writers out there, but what I'm trying to say is ... I can force myself to write, and I can write pretty okay when push comes to shove (read: deadlines), but there's a piece of me missing in that piece of writing ....

I don't exactly know how to elaborate on that .... If any of my close friends decide to put their mind to torture and read my blogs from beginning to end, they would probably not see any difference ....

Anywayz, here's to writing ... from the heart ...

Update

Well, ten years have passed ... And I now know what kind of writer I am ... My second attempt at fiction was borne out of desperation ... I was out of work for about four months ... I got interviews, but that was about it ... One day, I just felt so desperate that a voice in my head said, "Just write, J." And that's what I did ... I totally winged it ... I'm Not Here is dripping with cliche ... In fact, one of the working titles is Cliched ... To me, the novel contains every single thing that any writer should AVOID ... But, like I said, I was desperate ... Then, events happened ... I took those events into account ... And about four months later, I'm Not Here is finished ... 50,000 words in four months ... If only this happened when I had to write my bachelor's thesis ... 

So, looking at the types of writers I've delineated above, I'm a bit of everything ... I loved researching for my second novel ... I had fun looking at clothes that the main character would love to wear ... I even got a copy of Thames & Hudson's Dictionary of Fashion & Fashion Designers ... It was important that I got settings correctly, so the town in the novel is partly fiction, partly fact ... 

But, I made things up as I went along ... Names and even the plotline ... Not so much places ... Most of them are actually based on real places and in fact are real places ... Like I said, setting is important ... But, I did not have a whiteboard mapping out outcomes ... I totally winged it ... If for some reason that certain plot points mirror current events, it's purely incidental or coincidental, whichever way you want to look at it ... 

Just think, if I could write 50,000 words in four months, imagine a year ... I'd give it all, especially the researching part ... That's the one that takes the most time ... As for writing itself, I find that most days, I write a thousand words a day ... That's a good haul for a writer, I think ... A thousand words per day equal 90,000 words in three months and you already have a novel ... 

That's why all my writing are attempts at fiction ... When I enjoy doing it, and I do love writing, it comes to me like a dream unbeckoned ... Certain words, phrases, little idiosyncrasies ... When I'm pressured to write, I can still do it, but it depends on what sort of writing it is ... If I were to do a Masters degree in Literature and my thesis is something to do with creative writing, I think I can manage ... Unlike twenty years ago when I literally ran away from doing my undergraduate thesis ... 

So, what happened to work, huh? Well, I think I'd rather be a full-time writer ... Truth be told, I enjoyed that eight months of desperation ... No money came in, but I did something that truly blow my mind away ... I wrote a novel ... I never thought I could, but I did ... Whether it's a good one is besides the point ... Point is, at 43 years of age, I finally know what I want to be ...