To what.
To write?
To share, release.
I want.
I should?
I think, thought.
But how.
But where?
But nothing, excuse.
~~~
When I was a little girl, I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. I remember my mom telling me very early-on that artists are poor and sad, and that I should set my sights on anything but that.
Writing seemed like a more practical form of art, and so I pursued that. I entered writing competitions, and won them. I was chosen to attend writing conferences, and knew it was something I loved and was good at.
I wrote poetry, I wrote stories, I wrote characters. For a long time in my teens, I was fascinated by writing about imaginary people. I would create a new person or group of people, and write every detail about their lives and personalities. Sometimes there would be stories attached to these people, sometimes there wouldn't be. 95 percent of my characters were women, because I didn't understand males in the least. Whenever I tried to create boy characters, they always wound up pretty effeminate.
I know that a lot of young writers put themselves in their stories, or idealized versions of themselves. But I was always very careful to be writing about different people. Sometimes I tried to create characters that I felt were 'opposite' of who I was, in order to try to see things from that other side. Infact, whenever I'd try to make myself into a 'character', I found I just couldn't find the words. This is likely because real people can't really be defined. So much of who we are is every little experience in our lives. I know 'me' so well that it's impossible to know where to start or finish.
I've written about some individual times in my life, admittedly harboring a deep dark desire to write an entire autobiography one day... But these wind up sounding very much like journal entries - and this frustrates me.
In my adult life, I've gone away from writing for the most part. I would love to get back to it, but my ego is in the way. I want to write something I'm proud of. But it's been so long, I'm not really sure I know how to write anything but journal entries anymore.
And my higher self says 'who cares what you write? Just write'. And my ego is afraid of failure to produce something worthwhile.
And I know so many artists with this same destructive whirlwind in their heads, that it seems even though my mom warned me to be anything but that, perhaps I had no choice in the matter - an artist I already was, am, and will be.
