(Today’s prompt is the second of five throughout the challenge called “Something random.”)
I wish I could write. I know I’m better at writing than most people. I inhale grammar rules and exhale clean copy. I like to research. I like to find information and share it with others. I am going to library school because I know how to use Google to get what I want. I write short stories that I pour all of my sadness into, but still leave enough for myself. Some of them get published because someone else likes them. Most of them don’t. I would make a good managing editor of a literary magazine. I know how to put things in order and make them make sense. I know how to teach, but I’m scared of teaching. I know how to make a clean spreadsheet. I know how to organize data, but only in a stuffy, clinical way. I have friends who seemingly effortlessly put words on the page, beautiful words, the type I figure I might stumble upon by chance in my own writing. I have stopped writing to come up with the next sentence to write here at least three times in this paragraph, each time for several minutes. So little of being a writer is actually writing. So much is agonizing over what’s next. Should there be a next sentence? A next chapter? Should I know what I want to say when I start, or should I let it come to me as I go? How much can I know? Is this supposed to be good? Is this bad? Is it OK that it’s bad? When will I be proud of myself? When will I have earned my own approval? (When I learn to write, the voice inside my head says, and the cycle repeats.)
This is an entry in my 30 Day blogging challenge. Read the first post explaining it here, or see all the posts in the challenge here.
Onward and Eastward 