Digging deeper

Submitted by rep on Fri, 2008/02/29 - 05:56.

So I've gotten back into writing (I hate to admit it, but I did stop for awhile) and it's going good, digging deeper, getting more confident. I have written nearly everyday. Earlier this week though, I was mad that I had to go to work and do dumb projects that a monkey could do. I felt as though I was TOTALLY! WASTING! MY! VALUABLE! TIME!. But I realize that while I don't want to always being doing this job, it's not that bad, and they gave me the job because I wanted it. I applied for it, I show up every day and expect a paycheck every two weeks, I have to take my lumps, too.

I have plans to set up a desk in the second bedroom for writing. I think I can find a reasonably cheap one at a Goodwill or someplace, and maybe spend a little time refurbishing it. TLC. By making some room for writing in my life I hope to be able to keep at it.

Yet another source of inspiration* was digging out my old notebooks from high school where I took Creative Writing with Ann Staley.

I went to high school in Philomath, Oregon, which at the time had a population of around maybe 3000. It's still sort of a logging town and high schools sports were--and still are a very big deal. I was not impressed with sports or jocks or people who didn't see there was a whole big world of Culture out there to be explored. I was told all my life by teachers and my parents that I was smart, I should go to college and learn and do these great things. I looked around at the kids in high school and I knew I wouldn't be around people like them when I got where I was going. I sound snobby saying that (and I was no doubt considered a major snob in high school), but I dreamed big.

Junior year I started taking Creative Writing, and there was some drama at home that was really emotionally draining. I have been a reader from a very early age and I loved stories and poems so much. (It's still true that if it's written, I'll read it, even dumb bumper stickers or billboards. It's compulsive, I tell you.) This was just what I had been searching for: reading, writing, reading aloud, more writing. It's sort of from the model of Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones--I know we sort of used that book as our "textbook".

It's very interesting to see places where I stopped short, and other places where I was vague, contradicted myself, got too glib or too emotional. I've only started to look through them, but I found a short story I wrote about maintaining friendship that came out nearly whole. And all the words of encouragement! No wonder I believed in writing so fully. I don't know what happened along the way.