And An Awkward Hello To You, Too!

I like to write.

If you know me well, you probably already know this. I guess it’s sort of obvious. As a little girl, I was a near-obsessive reader and journaler. There are drawers stuffed to the brim of barely-legible diaries at my mother’s house, collecting dust, that I will never be able to throw away. The early ones have dreamy adolescent flower or constellation designs on their shiny covers, and satisfying little locks on the side for the illusion of privacy, of having secrets worth keeping.

Over the years, these tiny books started to stack up as I chronicled my mostly-normal life. The first one I can locate is from 2^nd grade, age eight. In it, I wrote in unsteady pencil about my beagle Frisky, about Jesus and his father, God (thanks, Catholic school), and a lot, and I mean a lot, about my friends. The ramblings about my very, very best friends have that devotional little girl tone you can only conjure up when you are smaller than five feet and younger than ten, and are convinced that everyone else is way cooler than you will ever be.

As I crawled forward into teenagerhood, the focus in my journals (not “diaries” anymore, god, that’s so juvenile) changed, as it should, onto teenage things: boys. Boys who liked me, but I didn’t like back. Boys I liked who I despaired would never, ever notice me. There are frighteningly specific catalogues of first dates and first kisses and first fights. There is a legitimate five page spread, age 13, about the time I called the cute lifeguard from the neighborhood pool to ask him on a date. (He declined, as he was “kinda busy that summer,” thus handing me my very first romantic rejection to weep over.)

Of course other topics came up, too. That my parents just didn’t get me. More about how much I loved my friends. Generic complaints about my grades, my skin, my body, my hair. What to be when I grew up, and how I’d die, just crawl away and actually expire, if I didn’t get a part in the school play. That someday I was going to live far, far away and be exotic and sophisticated and mysterious and wear beautiful dresses and drink coffee in foreign cafes (probably wearing a scarf and big sunglasses) and read poetry and have adventures and see the world, the whole world! I doodled the word California in bubble letters a lot. Exclamations points and dramatically underlined phrases pound their way into every paragraph.

But let’s get real, during those years I mostly wrote about boys.

In college life changed and became, in equal measure, more interesting and more difficult. I wrote then, too, even more than before. I had a lot more to say. I’d sit up in the middle of the night in my creaky dorm room bed, leaning against a sweaty cinderblock wall as I typed furiously on my very first laptop over thumping music from other people's parties and lives. During those years I wrote about family, about sickness, about falling in and out of real love, about the astonishing brevity of a human life and what on earth I was supposed to do with mine. I wrote like it would save me, like it was breathing. I think it actually was breathing, for awhile.  

After college, I got swept up in the business of creating a real life, and I wrote far less. Whole years are now blank and mostly unremembered – if I didn’t write it down, if I can’t flip to the exact page where it happened and I noted it, it doesn’t feel like it happened. The only exception to the non-writing years are when I’ve traveled. If I’m on the road – any road, anywhere – you cannot tear the notebook of the moment out of my hands. Looking back now, my travel journals dazzle me with their intensity. In those pages, I can quantify my excitement by just counting the adjectives in each sentence. I can see myself at 23, stomach-down on the top bunk of an overnight train through Norway, in the bumpy scrawl of my handwriting. Those dirty little books are detailed and passionate and certainly ridiculous, and I love them more than is reasonable.

But aside from those fleeting times, almost all of my 20’s went by in an unexamined haze.

About two years ago this began to bother me. A lot of things began to bother me, actually, most of them involving the fact that I was now a real human adult instead of just a work in progress, and that I wasn’t positive I liked her. I kept thinking of the self I thought I’d be when I was 16, felt a little shadow girl watching me from a dark corner, wondering. I was feeling restless and vaguely incorrect, and wasn't sure how to fix it. So, I decided to do the only thing that made sense: write about it.

At first it felt unnatural, but it got easier with time. The urge to write became a little bit aggressive, a little bit chronic. In an attempt to try something new, I took an online writing class in creative nonfiction/memoir. And this, dear friends, was the moment.

For some reason, I attacked this class. I realized right away that I had no idea what I was doing, and this embarrassed me, so I used that shame as fuel to work harder. I learned things that are obvious in retrospect, but that I had never been given the tools to understand. I learned the importance of writing artfully and deliberately, instead of just blathering. I learned to write for a reader, which is new and scary for a private journaler-girl. I learned how to write dialogue, which for some reason scared the crap out of me.  I learned to knock it off with the adverbs, and to show and not tell (which I am not doing here).

I know now that I’d rather hurl my body out a window than write a first draft of anything, but I also know that I have the patience to sit and polish one page for hours before I’m satisfied with the rhythm of it. And speaking of that, I understand now that writing has a rhythm, that it’s just another kind of music, and that if I arrange my words just right a song can be hidden underneath.  

I learned to give criticism with both kindness and clarity, and to accept it with an open mind. Even if it makes you cry. (Please, especially if it makes you cry.) And it is important to note that the best teachers are the ones who aren’t afraid to tell you that you suck, and that the only reasonable answer to that is to work harder.

I finished that class and took another. Finished that one, and took the next. I’ve been in class nonstop for eight months, producing new work every week. I now understand that the craft of writing is much, much harder than I ever gave it credit for, and that I want to be good at it.

The problem is that now I’m broke. I can’t afford another class right now, and I also feel like it’s time to stop hiding in a virtual classroom and just start working. My fear is that my dear friend laziness is going to creep in without the prompt of a paid-for class keeping me in check, so I’ve decided on a new plan: this little blog.

My goal is simple: to keep writing one essay, or story, per week, all summer. I have no objective clearer than that, no planned theme whatsoever. I’d like to try all different things. Maybe some travel essays, that’d be fun. I’d definitely like to try my hand at horror, give you all a look at the nightmares always plaguing me. Maybe I’ll try fiction, but I just don’t think I have that in me. My aim is to never say an untrue thing, which is harder than it sounds. 

And my request of you, my friends, is also simple: just be aware that I’m doing this. Peer pressure is a mighty powerful thing. Knowing that you will be (maybe?) compelled to click this little link from time to time to see what’s new in my head, keeping your virtual eye on me, will probably give me the motivation to find more to say. Even if it’s not polished, or original, or even remotely interesting, at least I’ll be writing. And with time, we’ll see where it goes.

On off days, I’ll probably post other things. Poetry, quotes, little artsy pictures. And I don’t know, videos of puppies probably. If none of that floats your internet boat, may I suggest you just find somewhere else to waste your desk time? You will be bored here.

Here’s the thing: if I put some of the energy I put into my ramblings, nonsensical emails into the actual creation of an actual essay, perhaps this chronic over-emailer will bother your inboxes less, too. One can hope.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. I promise you will find no genius here, no real art, just simple practice. We shall see.