I’ve hit a bump in the road. That is, if you can consider Mt. Denali a bump. My writing is my biggest priority, and yet it is the only area of my life that I am unsatisfied with. My style has contorted into an abortive chimera-esque mass; illusive, dense, deceptively pretty and incredibly difficult to understand. Here’s one of the better recent clips:
“A suit crouched close to her naked form. The skin had long since cooled, but her face still bloomed forth in heat, blood holding on to the burn, dissenting. The clean shine of her father’s colt mimicked from between her legs – chilled body, smoky lips. The man hovered still, close enough to trace the tangle of matter in her hair, the thick lumps’ failed back-door escape. Over-zealous blood got all the glory; it had raced across the stripes of her bed, triumphantly slamming against the end flag of the headboard.”
She’s supposed to be sitting against the footboard of her bed. Could you tell that? No? Know why? Because I didn’t tell you. Because I couldn’t figure out a way to get that out and ‘make every sentence count’. What happened to the smooth flowing style I used in high school? Look at how clear it all used to be:
“Upon reaching the frozen tree, she grasped the nearest dead branch and slowly began to climb. She continued for over an hour, eyes fixed on the tar black sky, lungs laboring to collect every last speck of air, and just as the muscles in her limbs felt as though they would rip apart, she reached the top. Standing atop the once beautiful world, she gazed at the fields of decay and despair. Glaring upwards, she breathed in shakily and whispered, ‘Why have you done this?’”
I need to find a happy medium. The problem is, I have no clue how to make tab A fit into slot B. I understand what’s wrong, but there’s an odd disconnect between my head and my hands. I’m struggling with this unexplainable need to merge poetics and prose, to create something beautiful. And it just ends up raw, embryonic, messy.
I’m not writing as much as I need to. College consumes every ounce of my grey matter, every drop of energy. Sometimes I’m bogged down with mundane memorizations that leave me utterly unable to be creative. As of late however, I’m finding that I’m overloaded with input. I have these flashes of inspiration – and I do jot them down – but I never have time to release any output in full. At least, that’s how it feels.
Which brings me to this blog. Several months ago, I decided I wanted to get in shape. I struggled with the concept of time. Time to workout, to plan meals, to breathe. I started waking up at 6am every morning to workout before catching the bus to campus. I saw progress. I wanted more. Then I began a daily fitness blog to hold myself accountable. I’ve never had a greater boost to my success.
So the plan is simple really – do the same here. After all, writing is what keeps me going. It is the single most effective tool in my life for any and all tasks I take on. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure out that writing could help my writing. We’ll go with fear – that’s a good one. But that doesn’t matter anymore. Why? Because I said so.
And this is my story.
