I haven’t allowed myself to freewrite on here in so long. I didn’t even now how to start, so I thought I would acknowledge my uncertainty. I wanted to take a break from poetry to write prose. It used to feel so natural, but I’ve gotten used to carefully analyzing every word. My job also affects my writing. I’ve spent so much time with academic writing, rewording, and precision. It’s good for my writing overall, but it’s forcing me to change and grow so much that it just doesn’t feel natural to me.
My poetry professor said that I’m improving rapidly. I felt like I was getting worse. He said that’s normal, because improving is like working up hill. It requires getting used to new techniques, and you might wake up sore from your effort the next day. He talked about improving up hill, having intervals of plateaus where you rest and feel comfortable until someone forces you to dig deeper and start climbing toward the next. I’m climbing pretty aggressively, and I like it overall. I’m still not very confident about it all, though. It doesn’t help my poems were rejected by this lit. journal on campus again. It happens—a lot for writers—it still is annoying, though. I’m glad my professor is so encouraging, because now I don’t necessarily think that my poems are rejected because they aren’t good enough. I think my style is unique and doesn’t mesh well with a lot of the poetry scene folks up here.
I dressed up like Cleopatra last night. I spray dyed my hair black for the evening. Two showers later: I’m mostly free of black dye, but our shower is stained, and there is black all over the sink and walls. Black even came out when I blew my nose this morning.
I’m at a coffee shop with intentions of writing. I guess this is a prewriting warm-up. I’m going to have to dig a lot deeper than this to get some real writing. I don’t even know where to start. I had a crazy busy week. It ran me to the ground. I handled it better than I expected, but I don’t want to write about that. I’m sick of letting business define my life. I had a literature professor comment on a profound story. He said something along the lines of, “We are busy are whole lives, and doing what? Nothing when you think about it.”
Last weekend I felt happy on the camping trip. I’m trying to be more observant of my feelings, especially happy ones. I felt happy watching my friend, Nik, hike with a walking stick while wearing mismatched clothes and a circular piece of birch tree bark on her head as a hat. Nik is one of those rare individuals who is just so full of life. My friend Adam is like that. I have similar feelings of happiness when people I love are full of joy. I’m reminded of how happy I feel on the day where we take the kids to the water park at work in the summer, or how happy I felt when I saw my dad child-like excited when we walked into the Piston’s game last winter. I guess, maybe I feel most alive when in the presence of joy. Adam and Nik are joyful people. It seems like the rare individuals I know who possess so much life, have all experienced some sort of emotional death at some point. It leads me to believe that one has to truly know the depths of despair to feel the greatest level of pure joy.
I don’t know what else I want to reflect on, but I think I’m ready to post this as a blog, then really start writing.
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2 comments:
about the rejection--just say fuck them. in the time span of one month, i had two short stories rejected, one novel rejected and one poetry volume rejected.
you take hits. it kinda hurts from time to time, it's going to get frustrating, but eventually things will fall into place. you could do what i'm going to do, and save rejection letters to burn them when you get hugely accepted :)
~stephanie
Thanks Aimee--I think the same thing about you, lady! As for the mismatched clothing, some would just say that's a lack of attention to details. ha.
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