When I was little, I was an incessant talker and a voracious reader. I brought thick books with me to restaurants, the dining table, the car, school - wherever I might have had a few spare minutes to delve into whichever world awaited me in the pages of my current read. I even kept a flashlight underneath my pillow to sneak in an extra hour or two of reading at night. One of my childhood traumas was dropping jam on my treasured hardcover copy of Breaking Dawn while eating breakfast, my weird eleven-year old fantasy of keeping the novel in perfect condition for my future grandchildren shattering when I saw that raspberry-stained page. You could say I've never been the same since - I never read while eating anymore. In fact, you would have been hard-pressed to find me with my nose in a book these past three years.
So, what happened? Well, for the sake of brevity; high school ruined writing for me. Once writing left me, so did reading. The beautiful world of words vanished from my life practically overnight, spurred by the moment I realized that my English grade during my first year of high school was dwindling on a C+. I dreaded written assignments and novel studies. Writing and reading became chores that I plowed through while stress-crying at 3AM in the morning.
But, Michelle, aren't writers born to write? I thought real writers have to write - writing is the air that they breathe! Typewriter ink is the blood that runs through their veins! Pens and scrawled-in Moleskins are extensions of their tweed-clad-bodies! Words are pouring out of them like the bodily fluids of a 14th century European struck by the bubonic plague! (Ew.)
Perhaps I'm an anomaly in the world of writing, and my brain just hates me and wants me to suffer, but writing is hard. It's draining, exhausting, frustrating, stressful, and most of the time, it's just way easier to quit. I stopped writing because I believed the mantra that all of those websites catered to writers spouted: "Writers cannot not write". Meanwhile, here I was going through yearlong stretches without churning out a single creative sentence. I was suffocated by this terrible feeling of not being good enough. The words I struggled to put together didn't sound anything like the work of the columnists and authors I envied and admired. I wanted to push through this paralysis, but at the same time, I didn't. I didn't want to keep trying when the right verbs and adjectives kept escaping me, and my prose felt forced and unoriginal.
Keep in mind, throughout this whole ordeal, somehow I still knew that I would go back to books and stories. I just felt trapped, waiting for the clouds to part over me and a single ray of light to shine down on my stagnant creative life, finally allowing me to become the writer I'd always dreamed of being. And then I read this quote:
"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone had told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase; they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative, work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know that it’s normal and the important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you finish one piece. It’s only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take awhile. You just gotta fight your way through."
Basically, this very melodramatic, angsty blogpost is an announcement of my return. I know I may as well be shouting into the void, as currently all 347 of this website's pageviews are from yours truly, but there's a nice sense of security in knowing that this space is solely for me and my own creative growth. However, if someone out there has stumbled upon my little blog, and for whatever reason has read this entire post (or skimmed, that's okay), here's my official "hello" to you!
I bought way too many books in Korea, where I am right now, so I guess I'll slowly be getting back into the reading grind, too. These new additions to my puny library are as follows:
- The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. I loved The Old Man and the Sea, so I have high hopes for this one!
- Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. I already finished this, and it was just okay. I don't know, everybody seems to love it, but I think this is similar to how I was with The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I didn't see what everyone else saw in this novel.
- Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. I don't know much about this one, but I'm excited!
- The Dinner by Herman Koch. This had a really interesting synopsis, and I was craving a more contemporary read.
- The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. I'm hooked on health documentaries - I've watched Fed Up way too many times for someone whose current diet consists mostly of fried chicken, pork belly, and various noodle dishes. I've also seen every movie about veganism and America's f*cked-up food industry that's on Netflix right now. Perhaps this novel will introduce me to the world of health books, at least until Katie Couric makes another documentary.
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. To be completely honest, I'm not sure exactly what compelled me to buy this one. One theory I have is that it, for whatever reason, reminds me of The Shadow of the Wind, and that novel was an essential part of my Korea trip last year.
With that, here's me signing off until my next post! And for all my strugglin' writers out there, just know that 2007 Avril Lavigne always has your back.
