Comments | tinywarrior: Write Stuff

tinywarrior

Write Stuff

Feb 06, 2002 14:51

I've been thinking about writing over the last few days...really thinking about it. Mostly, I've been wondering about the different reasons people write, and how they write--how much or little of their own voices creep into their printed words, what motivates them. I'm not thinking so much about journaling. I can certainly understand most of the ( Read more... )

writing

Comments 39

reive February 6 2002, 12:59:45 UTC

For me the process is about acting, or perhaps channeling. It is definitely about being more and other than Reive. When I am deeply into something I am writing I become my various characters, both when at the keyboard and in my life. It is hard to seperate myself from them, it is like posession, and sometimes I will spook, catching my reflection in a chromed elevator door, my garb fitting my current imaginary friends and a facial expression belonging to someone else, and I'll gasp. I see you, I'll say. But as much as they are on me, they are also with me, and if I feel a certain upset or annoyance, I will fee their finger brush across the top of my hand, or a palm on my shoulder. The detail is appalling, the texture of skin, the weight of flesh, their heat, their pulse. To write, I am a madwoman, making friends and forging bonds more intimate than sex with gollums I create from air and absences. They become so completely real they at times even visit others. I love the process, this madness, but it shames me deeply, as it is ( ... )

tinywarrior February 6 2002, 13:41:16 UTC

Why do you think it unnatural? I have experienced a bit of that as well...bringing characters into your world. I find the idea of creating intimate gollums fascinating, and I believe it's what the best writers do. It's interesting to me when people find writing to be a painful or uncomfortable process, because I have never found it to be so for myself. I sometimes wonder if my own writing isn't destined to be considered mediocre precisely for that reason--because it is not forged or birthed in that way. Then I remind myself, as I told someone last night, that every tiny bit of my happiness was hard won--I fought brutal battles for some of it. So perhaps my pain just occurred at a different place along the continuum. I'm not sure. How do you feel about your writing once it's finished? Are you happy with it? Or do you find yourself even more critical of it once it's done?

reive February 6 2002, 13:51:54 UTC

Well, you know, I sit down and chat with imaginary people. I let them live through my flesh. It's certainly not NORMAL. and I'm sure if I still had a shrink he'd have a field day with it ( ... )

blue_by_you February 6 2002, 13:03:01 UTC

How weird...this is just now on my friends list as a new post, Cate, but dated 1/26? I probably should think about this more before I write but... I write because I want to live forever, because so many people I loved died when I was young and I would be absolutely thrilled if I even had a grocery list from them. Actually, one of my grandma's kept notes in her Bible and a small diary of road trips with grocery expenses and gas expenses etc... and while my cousins and other relatives were busy grabbing up the expensive furniture and silver, I grabbed that Bible and that little book, it's all I wanted. I started writing letters to people when I was very young - books of them, never sent, just in case I died. I found out I was more me on paper than I could ever be with my voice, in person, with all the fears of rejection etc ( ... )

tinywarrior February 10 2002, 09:27:20 UTC

I've always kept journals for that reason...to leave a bit of myself behind. They're so completely garbled and unorganized, though; there's no telling what anyone would think of them! The craft part of it is something that sort of sneaks up on me. I'm too lazy to really take an active approach to improving my writing...but I can look back at things I wrote even a couple of years ago and see a difference. That's always a good sign!

emrecom February 6 2002, 13:29:13 UTC

I write because I am spectacularly inept at most everything else.

More importantly, I write because to not do would result in identity evaporation.

Choice has never been a significant option.

not that i consider myself to be a "writer," but ... rockstarbob February 6 2002, 13:30:10 UTC

i write to give gifts.

tinywarrior February 6 2002, 14:01:56 UTC

Perfect!

re: Write Stuff jourdannex February 6 2002, 13:34:19 UTC

I think journaling can be different from writing with a purpose. I think my own writing goes through stages. I used to very often write prose/poetry and it was a way of getting emotions out, but it felt very often as if I could not carry on until I got these thoughts out of my head, as if the ink was blood, it sometimes came through me, but when I went back to look at it, it did not always feel as if I wrote it, if that makes any sense ( ... )

Re: Write Stuff tinywarrior February 10 2002, 09:28:47 UTC

I'm awful at inventing characters. I usually draw from people I know, pictures I've seen...something outside of my own head. I embellish from there, but I can never just draw them out the way that some people can.