Monday, February 23, 2009

My Own Worst Enemy

I have always loved writing. Though ever since college, every time I sit down to write I feel like I need to always be producing something of great importance and quality. I miss the days when I could sit in my room and fill a whole journal with poems and stories and didn't care whether or not they were any "good." Writing was purely cathartic. But then I started writing for grades in school and it became more serious...now I do it professionally and it's definitely serious. I have trouble sitting down and writing for fun. It's not that I don't want to. Sometimes I feel like I have a story, poem or idea just bursting inside of me and I sit down full of energy to write it but become easily deflated because I keep revising it before I'm even finished with the first sentence. I attended a short writing class recently where someone talked about how tricky it is to do real "stream of consciousness" writing because you are literally trying to out-write the inner editor inside of you. I'm a perfectionist by nature and an editor by profession so that's not easy. Blogging has helped me a bit because I feel like my thoughts don't have to be perfect, but that doesn't mean I can't hear the inner critic inside me...I just ignore her a little more. I yearn to write more freely just to keep my creativity going. I just have to figure out a way to write faster than I can think.

1 comment:

  1. I think you're perfect when you're not perfect Amber. So go crazy, write jibberish, confuse us with words we don't understand, create your own language. Heck, don't stop there. Create your own Utopia. I'm sure you could do that. :)

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