Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Writing as a Way of Life

Things are always getting in the way of my life.  Whether it's work, or the anime convention that I'm working on, or perhaps just allergies or maybe it's a cat or two who NEED attention NOW... things are always getting in my way.  I went to college, after all, in order to get a degree so I could have some kind of backing when I typed my little heart out.  I thought to myself, 'With this degree, I can write and then people will say, "She knows what she's doing because she has a degree."'

HAHAHAHAHA

Sorry, I had a bit of a moment there.  I tried to write when I was a teenager, and even though I look back at those stories and cringe, I know there was some spark of life in them.  There are always ideas, but in this day and age it's awfully hard to share those ideas.  Don't get me wrong, the internet is great for putting yourself out there.  But it's TOO big.  There are TOO many people writing.  TOO many ideas being tossed around and no one is patient enough to read through things either.  I've found that about 90% of the emails I send out anymore are in large part ignored because I'll get an email asking about something I already detailed in full.  Was I not clear enough in my first email?  Of course I was, they just didn't read it!  My husband once just re-posted something he'd written to someone because they refused to read what he'd sent before they asked for it.

Basically, back when I was growing up, it was easier to write.  I guess I'm wiser now, because I know unless I put something out there that's fantastic,  it's not going to be read.  In fact, there might be only one or two people who ever read what I'm writing now.  However, do I care?  No.  I've heard authors tell aspiring authors that you just have to write.  Just keep doing it.  Eventually someone's going to take notice that you're doing all of this and maybe by that time you'll be good enough to actually become famous.  Or maybe, at least be found by a small group of people who like what you write.  Or at least, I hope that might be the case someday as I still haven't been found by anyone, and even my husband rarely reads what I've posted.

It's sort of a disheartening thing when all you want to do with your life is write; but there's no one who cares enough to read it.  I used to have to shove stories under my mother's nose for her to read things.  She'd never just ask what I was working on.  I'd have to shove DIARIES under their noses just to get them to read what I thought of them.  I even had a little brother who wanted so little to read about my life that he didn't even want to invade my privacy.

I still leave diaries lying about the house, my only writing that I tend to do that isn't blogging, and still, never do I have someone pick it up and say, 'Hey, what's this?'  No, no one picks them up and I've been writing a daily journal since 1997.  I kid you not, I have at least a small blurb for every single day for over 10 years.  Not once has anyone read them but myself.  Mind you, I've forced people to listen to them, but no one has ever bothered to go, "hey, wonder what she was doing two years ago?"

And even though I have all of these pressures against me writing, I still do it.  Maybe now I just feel obligated to write.  Or maybe it's because after I've read something really great I think about how great it would be if I could write something just as good.  Maybe I could get published writing about my cats, or my home or my life, that maybe someday, somewhere, someone would want to read about it.

Thus...I have this blog.  It only shows a mere fraction of what's been going on in my life, and although much of my life is pretty boring, I'd like to think that perhaps it's an outlet to allowing me to expand my writing.  I still get criticized for my typos and grammar, but I believe I'm better than many of those bloggers out there who don't care about grammar.

Oh my gosh, that reminds me of so many people I meet along the way.  I think it's that bull-headedness that really makes bad writing stick around.  These people think they're good writers.  I'm always amazed at them, really.  I used to edit for one of those people who couldn't take criticism and kept writing badly over and over again.  And then just recently I ran into a fellow who was so haughty about his awesome writing that when I was curious enough to try to read it, I nearly fell over laughing.  I would NOT have taken credit for what he wrote!  If I had been him, I would have been ashamed to even post something that atrocious!

Sure, I know I write with dangling participles.  I know I write passive sentences.  But to read what he wrote out loud...oh my gosh, I'm pretty sure his writing would have improved 10-fold if he'd only read out loud what he wrote.  So take that as a hint for you, have someone read your writing out loud. If it doesn't flow like someone naturally speaking, then most likely there is something very wrong with it!

And so, in something of a summary, as I know my husband will be returning home eventually and I'll need to work on dinner... yet another thing gets in the way of my writing (of course).  But I've started working on a novel about my life with my cats.  Oh of course, I'm not nearly as witty as some of the writers I've been reading lately, and maybe I don't have an incredibly sentimental tale to tell since they haven't died or touched anyone's life, but they've touched mine.  I'd like to tell the story about how my cat drags his cat bed around the house and how my other cat demands to be petted the moment we get out of the shower.  To me, it's interesting, and it's a way of memorializing something that's happened to me over the years.

Maybe...just maybe, someone will read it someday.