Rekindling & Reconnecting: This Writer's Thoughts
Last time I really worked with one of these I was sixteen and the year was 2004. Now it's 2011 and I'm bordering on twenty-four. Yikes!
I have a Tumblr... Why am I back on LJ, too?
I'm both attempting to move away from my past while rekindling it. Certain things I loved about myself then. (I loved writing on LJ). The willingness and ability to just write and write and write for hours on end. I heard a lot of teenagers have that ability, to just focus on their beloved craft with unending attention, and I suppose I want that adolescent obsessive-compulsive urge back in my system.
While I spend a lot of time on Ever Night, it's not always the same way I want to spend my time. Again, not to knock my love of the comic but it's not the same as prose writing. I realize not everything I wrote as a teen was ZOMG! AMAAAAAZING! but it was mine, and I could continue without worrying over every single excruciating detail. Part of me blames college for that critical eye. Sure I became a better reader and understood complicated meaning (hidden meaning) better than i had at, say, seventeen, but it stole the sheer love. Love was replaced by politics and bitchiness and ass-kissery.
College broke my heart. College shattered my love of writing.
Believe me, I received a good education at Drake University, and because of the opportunities I walked away with a Minor in Film Studies. But the other reason is because I refused to kiss ass to a narcissistic professor and there were only a handful of real fiction writing classes. One was interesting yet skewed (semi-helpful) while the other was at a time of crisis and breakdown and the professor insisted I needed to push through heavy clinical depression and needed no extended deadlines (crushing). Not that my writing was unsound, however; I became a master at writing papers and articles and other creatively analytical pieces yet...
I was born to be a storyteller. Nothing quite gives me joy and satisfaction as weaving a story does.
I've been out of university for a little over a week and I've taken it upon myself to 're-educate' myself as a writer. To love to write and love what I write--even if that means loving the ugly sketch-writing, the roughs, that will one day be polished into something beautiful, compelling, and meaningful for me and for my readers.
I spent so much time worrying about grades and how to play the game with professors' grading scales (don't even get me started on Drake's idiotic policy of 'mandatory attendance' when, at collegiate level, it should be prerogative and sometimes work/sickness gets in the way) that I lost my way as a writer.
I do recall one class with an amazing professor called Swilky. He had that tough Brooklynese accent yet was a nice man. Slender, average height, gray-haired and often bespectacled, I earned a B in his class during my psychological shit-storm. Did he give a holy hell of busy work?--you bet! But he also engaged with me as a writer and a storyteller--and that was the point of the class, storytelling.
Since then I have examined the ways in which storytellers I admire actually do tell their stories. Combine that with a filmic eye and, suddenly, I can read a further depth in artistic texts.
So while scripting Ever Night is not the same as writing prose, I view it--as well as my gedanken processes--as an equally important step in my prose-style storytelling.
I've had my share of jackasses and downers come after me; not everyone will love my writing. I'm not a Faulkner fan--hate his writing--but I respect him. And sometimes that is the best thing you can grant a fellow writer: respect. But not just writers, now that I think of it, but any man, woman, or in-between, what-have-you that produces something creative, in their style with their heart and soul imbuing this, is deserving of this respect. Without creativity we would not dream dreams; we, as people, would not do and achieve great things. Science may have taken us to the moon with slide rules but it took someone--many someones--to dream about caressing the moon's milky surface to grant such desire to endeavor such a trek into the celestial frontier. And still we dream of it.
As those who create, this is our duty. We are here to inspire, to form dreams, to spark desire, to ignite every person in this wide, wide world of ours with something so moving it is soul searing.
And that is why I will endeavor to write more. That is my desire. That is where I want to land, somewhere among the stars, as someone who inspires. Through struggles and turmoil, through tears and frustration, I want these words to remind those of us who create (and we all must create, somehow) to continue to create--no matter how or what we create.
~Stasia
P.S. The original title "Now I am U N B R E A K A B L E" came from "Unbreakable" by Fireflight.
God, I want to dream againTake me where I've never been
I want to go there
This time I'm not scared
Now I am unbreakable, it's unmistakable
No one can touch me
Nothing can stop me
Sometimes it's hard to just keep going
[...]
Forget the fear it's just a crutch
That tries to hold you back
And turn your dreams to dust
All you need to do is trust
Some of my favorite lyrics. I think to truly be creative you have to have faith. It doesn't have to be faith in God but faith in something.
Let your faith be in your craft...and be stronger because of it. ---ARO
I have a Tumblr... Why am I back on LJ, too?
I'm both attempting to move away from my past while rekindling it. Certain things I loved about myself then. (I loved writing on LJ). The willingness and ability to just write and write and write for hours on end. I heard a lot of teenagers have that ability, to just focus on their beloved craft with unending attention, and I suppose I want that adolescent obsessive-compulsive urge back in my system.
While I spend a lot of time on Ever Night, it's not always the same way I want to spend my time. Again, not to knock my love of the comic but it's not the same as prose writing. I realize not everything I wrote as a teen was ZOMG! AMAAAAAZING! but it was mine, and I could continue without worrying over every single excruciating detail. Part of me blames college for that critical eye. Sure I became a better reader and understood complicated meaning (hidden meaning) better than i had at, say, seventeen, but it stole the sheer love. Love was replaced by politics and bitchiness and ass-kissery.
College broke my heart. College shattered my love of writing.
Believe me, I received a good education at Drake University, and because of the opportunities I walked away with a Minor in Film Studies. But the other reason is because I refused to kiss ass to a narcissistic professor and there were only a handful of real fiction writing classes. One was interesting yet skewed (semi-helpful) while the other was at a time of crisis and breakdown and the professor insisted I needed to push through heavy clinical depression and needed no extended deadlines (crushing). Not that my writing was unsound, however; I became a master at writing papers and articles and other creatively analytical pieces yet...
I was born to be a storyteller. Nothing quite gives me joy and satisfaction as weaving a story does.
I've been out of university for a little over a week and I've taken it upon myself to 're-educate' myself as a writer. To love to write and love what I write--even if that means loving the ugly sketch-writing, the roughs, that will one day be polished into something beautiful, compelling, and meaningful for me and for my readers.
I spent so much time worrying about grades and how to play the game with professors' grading scales (don't even get me started on Drake's idiotic policy of 'mandatory attendance' when, at collegiate level, it should be prerogative and sometimes work/sickness gets in the way) that I lost my way as a writer.
I do recall one class with an amazing professor called Swilky. He had that tough Brooklynese accent yet was a nice man. Slender, average height, gray-haired and often bespectacled, I earned a B in his class during my psychological shit-storm. Did he give a holy hell of busy work?--you bet! But he also engaged with me as a writer and a storyteller--and that was the point of the class, storytelling.
Since then I have examined the ways in which storytellers I admire actually do tell their stories. Combine that with a filmic eye and, suddenly, I can read a further depth in artistic texts.
So while scripting Ever Night is not the same as writing prose, I view it--as well as my gedanken processes--as an equally important step in my prose-style storytelling.
I've had my share of jackasses and downers come after me; not everyone will love my writing. I'm not a Faulkner fan--hate his writing--but I respect him. And sometimes that is the best thing you can grant a fellow writer: respect. But not just writers, now that I think of it, but any man, woman, or in-between, what-have-you that produces something creative, in their style with their heart and soul imbuing this, is deserving of this respect. Without creativity we would not dream dreams; we, as people, would not do and achieve great things. Science may have taken us to the moon with slide rules but it took someone--many someones--to dream about caressing the moon's milky surface to grant such desire to endeavor such a trek into the celestial frontier. And still we dream of it.
As those who create, this is our duty. We are here to inspire, to form dreams, to spark desire, to ignite every person in this wide, wide world of ours with something so moving it is soul searing.
And that is why I will endeavor to write more. That is my desire. That is where I want to land, somewhere among the stars, as someone who inspires. Through struggles and turmoil, through tears and frustration, I want these words to remind those of us who create (and we all must create, somehow) to continue to create--no matter how or what we create.
~Stasia
P.S. The original title "Now I am U N B R E A K A B L E" came from "Unbreakable" by Fireflight.
God, I want to dream againTake me where I've never been
I want to go there
This time I'm not scared
Now I am unbreakable, it's unmistakable
No one can touch me
Nothing can stop me
Sometimes it's hard to just keep going
[...]
Forget the fear it's just a crutch
That tries to hold you back
And turn your dreams to dust
All you need to do is trust
Some of my favorite lyrics. I think to truly be creative you have to have faith. It doesn't have to be faith in God but faith in something.
Let your faith be in your craft...and be stronger because of it. ---ARO