Beginning Again a Second Time: Reflecting on Rocking the World with Words

In my very first blog post of the semester I said that my main goal for writing was to write more and write without any inhibitions or thoughts about what other people thought about my writing. I said, “I want to write for myself and not think about how my writing will impact other people all the time.” Now that I think about it more I don’t think I really did that. I think I absolutely wanted to do that, but I don’t think I really did. That concept is something that is hard for me to follow. It’s hard because I always care about what people are going to say about my work.

I didn’t have a lot of free time on my hands to sit down and write leisurely (although I did write one poem when I was feeling down in the dumps at one point) so I figured my outlet would be through my creative writing class. What happened instead is that we had workshops in that class and I only kind of wrote for myself. I wrote what I wanted to write but I made sure it was written well and if it wasn’t, if I ran out of time or ideas, I bailed. I didn’t go to workshop because I have an overwhelming feeling that all my writing should be good and if it’s not I’ve failed.

Something I’ve learned from all this, though, is that if something I’ve written is not good that doesn’t mean I’ve failed. It means I’ve succeeded in learning what doesn’t work and that is just as important. I’ll continue to work on trying to put myself out there and just write when I can and when I want to sans a care in the world about what others have to say: “It doesn’t matter how many times I do it and it doesn’t matter if someone thinks I suck at it and it doesn’t matter if what I have to say doesn’t matter.”

The other thing was to begin again and stop writing boring stuff in boring ways. My writing was becoming a snoozefest and now that I’ve taken this class, I know exactly how to counter that. I’ve learned more than I ever have about structure and timing. I’ve tried to implement these cool new ideas into other creative writing too. More than ever, I’ve experimented with dialogue, rhythm, and dynamic and I think several of these experiments have turned out successful. I have overcome the “learning-to-ride-my-bike-taught-me-how-to-overcome-obstacles” scum writing and that’s something to celebrate.