begin at the beginnings

I want to write; to be a writer.  Maybe it’s just this post-college stage that has me so longing for intellectual stimulation, for opening up a blank word document and imagining the possibilities, or maybe it’s the vast expanse set out before me; the terrifying openness of my future looming overhead that has me scrambling for something, anything to cling to.  Whatever the case, I can’t help but find myself alone in my two bedroom apartment above a busy neighborhood street thinking, I want to write.

 

I’ve tried writing multiple times before with little to no result.  Not only have I been a fulltime student for the past 13 years of my life, writing mostly mundane book reports and philosophical musings, but at the culmination of my educational career, I took a memoir writing class and spent 5 months straight working on what would hopefully be my memoir documenting this confusing stage of life.  Suffice to say, it did not turn out as I had imagined.

 

I have this habit of over-critiquing everything I create.  Back in grade school art class I was the same way.  I would come up with some lofty ceramics project I’d want to make, filled with all this symbolism and intricate detail.  I would spend hours of my own free time thinking and planning and working on this project; I would physically leave the classroom while mentally remaining there, stooped over in my stool, covered in clay.  At last, when the project was due, I would be scrounging to finish in time, thinking things like due dates and time-tables weren’t intended for true masters.  Did Michelangelo have a deadline to meet when he painted the Sistine Chapel? (maybe he did, but I’d never think so). 

 

So I’d turn in my project, thinking if I had had only a bit more time, it would have turned out better.  A week or two would pass, my teacher struggling to grade the myriad of works collected in as quick a time as possible, and all the while I’d sit and dream about how beautiful my own work had been.  Granted, it could have been better had I had the extra time, but I could settle for near perfect if I had to.

 

Without fail, my project never returned to me in the same state as when I had submitted it.  Nothing had changed in its material nature, no chips or cracks to give witness to it’s being handled and transported from classroom to teacher’s home and back again, no coffee stains on the pages of a paper to imply that my professor actually did have a life outside of school.  To anyone else, my project would appear the exact same, but to my eyes and my perspective, it would loose much of its appeal, its perfection.  I would take it in again from an unbiased viewpoint and be well aware of its shortcomings: the shoddy craftsmanship or the trite symbolism.  I’d be disappointed in my own abilities and cautious to attempt another such work.  The wonderfully supportive parents that I have would boast and brag about this masterpiece of an art project and display it on the mantelpiece for years to come, where it would stand to mock me and my inabilities as an artist.

 

It’s in this same vein that my memoir came to be.  After months of detailed work and serious introspection, I was forced to meet a generous yet all-too-present deadline and was unhappy with the results.  I felt that it didn’t quite convey the depth of my thought processes and didn’t sound like my true writers voice, or rather, like the writer’s voice I had hoped to put forth.  It was melodramatic and shallow and sporadic and once again, all I had to gain from that experience was the experience itself. 

 

And now here I am again, attempting to write.  This time, however, I will not be working under any deadlines, and I will not be forced to comply with any classroom requirements.  It will be on my time, in my framework, and hopefully completed under my own master of discipline.

 

Now, where to begin?