Tuesday 30 June 2009

Writing

I'm feeling an itch to write - but it's more of an imaginary itch. There doesn't seem to be anything there to scratch.

Hmm. Even my analogies seem to be lacking. I'm nearing two months of being in bed, and aside from a fairly in depth and lengthy reading list and season 2 of "The Office", I feel I have actually accomplished very little.

Okay, I will give myself a little break. I suppose it's hard to get creative juices flowing when you're staring at orange walls all day, confined to a bed, with the biggest thrill being that I can see out the front window from my bed.

But I'm grappling now for something bigger. In the past I have dabbled in all sorts of different writing styles, including poetry, short story, novels, theatrical plays and screenplays. What I feel right now is a longing to write, but with no focus of even what type of writing I want to do, let alone a subject.

I also have always found it hard to write when I'm happy. Does that seem strange? Probably not, when you take a close look at those in the entertainment industry. It's wrought with angst and troubles and distraught personalities. There is something about melancholy that feeds creativity.

It's also hard to write when your day to day life is not filled with varied experiences. The more you are exposed to, the more subjects you have at your fingertips to explore. And so my very happy life that happens to be fairly stationary right now is the perfect formula for writer's block.

And still I lay in this bed, frustrated at the hours I could spend typing away on the laptop, pouring out my heart and mind and ideas into a personal creation, and yet nothing comes.

They say that you should write about what you know. The problem there is that I have lived a charmed life, void of troubles and trials and heartache and angst. Oh, that's not to say I haven't had emotional ups and downs - it's just that in the grand scheme of things, life has pretty much gone the way I hoped and expected. Which, unfortunately, makes for fairly boring subjects. And although "creative writing" insinuates that the author can go to imaginary places previously unexperienced, it is truly difficult to find an authenticity in such journeys without some personal access.

Ah well. At least I have rediscovered the passion to write. Perhaps just keeping that swimming in the forefront of my mind will lead to something I actually want to put on paper.

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