I have to admit it, this week has been really hard on me and, at the same time, really special. I have been writing little stories since Monday, I am up to 21 right now, and sure not all of them are good but I figure that even if one out of five is, I still have made real progress on my writing; four good/acceptable stories in one week is better than none or just one (or two, or three; if you want to be specific).
I have no idea how it works, to be a writer; I write, that is as far as I go, still somehow I feel that these stories are different. People always tell me “write about what you know” and until Monday I sincerely felt that I knew nothing about any specific thing.
And then on Monday, my hand searched for a pencil and for my notebook, and words started to empty out. I don’t know if you have read Snow by Orhan Pamuk, well it is basically a long and lovely novel that explains two things: 1) That a friendship based on the shared genuine love of one simple thing will go far, and 2) that writing for some individuals comes from a seemingly outside force, in one moment you are a normal human being going about your day and in the next you are a writer dealing with an uncontrollable pouring of words. It’s a good novel. Maybe not for all, but if you have ever felt that urge to just sit and write (or draw, or compose music, or whatever) you will probably like it. Anyway, it happened like that, going about my day, no computer, sad, unsatisfied with life; the hand went to the pencil, the pencil to the sheet and it has not stopped since.
Turns out, I do know some things about some matters, I have in fact been living for 27 years and eleven months, and that makes a difference. Maybe at 16 I was not quite there, or 22 or 26... and I am not saying I am ready for the Nobel prize, but I think, finally after all these years I understood what writing about what you know meant. It was never about science and facts, it was about my mind. I know my thoughts; everything else is relative to them. I know exactly how I feel about coffee, and milk, and cows and well suicide, pedophilia and death. I have grown into those thoughts; at 18, I believed that the French guy was cool and now I know for a fact that he was (and probably still is) a jerk. At 21, I assumed one could run away and never look back, but you always look back and miss something. I thought love was easy at 24, and it isn’t and is not even that big of a deal that it’s not; it’s actually better that way.
I will never be Stephen King I am sure of it, because his writings make me want to cry. The one little story I wrote about flesh being cut by a medical saw almost made me want to faint, and it’s OK. That is why Stephen Kind is Stephen King, so nobody else has to deal with being him, we can all carry on with our vanilla writings, knowing that someone else is doing the stuff about amputations and skin burning.
Write about what you know and know who you are, they came together on Monday. Thanks to this blog, I have actually started to acknowledge who I really am, if you think about it, I post most days about the art I love, the music I like and my take on my own life. I write knowing that at least two people that know me will read it, so I have to be honest and clear, I can’t fool them. To not lie everyday is really an interesting experiment; I am a liar, I have always been. My family is the Big Fish* kind of family: if the story is kind of boring, well, add a little extra to make it fit into the reality you want. Sure enough the family tree is filled with amazing adventures and incredible oddities (read One Hundred Years of Solitude, by García Márquez, to get an idea).
And maybe that was what I was doing wrong, I wanted to make my stories sound better; I was lying, and of course they never were good enough, because if you are going to lie on a piece of paper you have to go all the way and compete with astoundingly dishonest people. Then my lies were never big enough, they were like throwing a firecracker into Hiroshima (or Nagasaki), because I was raised to tell believable lies, that is the whole point in adding things to an anecdote, nothing about dead people walking or surviving the attack of a serial killer, just your ordinary “...and then, you are not going to believed what happened, bla bla” stuff.
However on Monday, I wrote a simple 50 word note on envying talented people, just that, my true envy of them and the fear of being a nobody. Then came 40 words on knowing that I had made a mistake long ago (I had not thought enough before accepting a proposal) followed by 70 words on missing grandpa and 130 on the strange feeling of taking care of grandma; that was it, 120 here, 60 there, 150, all about real moments, all about things I knew. I love it. To be honest and finally write down what I think about eloping, bulimia and dreams; face the fact that I am probably a little jaded and mostly confused.
It has been incredible, and yes, as I told you in the first line of this post, it has also been hard, because part of accepting who I am is accepting who I never was and who I will never be, and sometimes that type of honesty can break your heart, but writing is worth it; I have also come to learn in my years alive, that the heart heals quite rapidly and that dealing with a broken heart is easier than facing a writer’s block (the first one only needs obscene amounts of chocolate and ice cream, the second one a bizarre mixture of substances and experiences that I have yet to master).
So, anyway, thanks, because if you are reading this you are part of all of it, and if we were ever to meet, I would gladly buy you a drink (a cheap one of course because I am poor).
Now, a song!!!
Oh, OK, this is perfect, remember that I can’t ask this computer to play videos, and well that means that I can’t actually go and search the Web (the World Wide Web) for a new song, but!! I have been loving a song that I cannot post because Embedding was Disabled by Request... so instead of going in search for a new video and kill my computer in the process, I will just add a little link here --> The song is called The Comeback and it's by Shout Out Louds, listen to it and have a nice day!!!
* Directed by Tim Burton, 2003.
I have no idea how it works, to be a writer; I write, that is as far as I go, still somehow I feel that these stories are different. People always tell me “write about what you know” and until Monday I sincerely felt that I knew nothing about any specific thing.
And then on Monday, my hand searched for a pencil and for my notebook, and words started to empty out. I don’t know if you have read Snow by Orhan Pamuk, well it is basically a long and lovely novel that explains two things: 1) That a friendship based on the shared genuine love of one simple thing will go far, and 2) that writing for some individuals comes from a seemingly outside force, in one moment you are a normal human being going about your day and in the next you are a writer dealing with an uncontrollable pouring of words. It’s a good novel. Maybe not for all, but if you have ever felt that urge to just sit and write (or draw, or compose music, or whatever) you will probably like it. Anyway, it happened like that, going about my day, no computer, sad, unsatisfied with life; the hand went to the pencil, the pencil to the sheet and it has not stopped since.
Turns out, I do know some things about some matters, I have in fact been living for 27 years and eleven months, and that makes a difference. Maybe at 16 I was not quite there, or 22 or 26... and I am not saying I am ready for the Nobel prize, but I think, finally after all these years I understood what writing about what you know meant. It was never about science and facts, it was about my mind. I know my thoughts; everything else is relative to them. I know exactly how I feel about coffee, and milk, and cows and well suicide, pedophilia and death. I have grown into those thoughts; at 18, I believed that the French guy was cool and now I know for a fact that he was (and probably still is) a jerk. At 21, I assumed one could run away and never look back, but you always look back and miss something. I thought love was easy at 24, and it isn’t and is not even that big of a deal that it’s not; it’s actually better that way.
I will never be Stephen King I am sure of it, because his writings make me want to cry. The one little story I wrote about flesh being cut by a medical saw almost made me want to faint, and it’s OK. That is why Stephen Kind is Stephen King, so nobody else has to deal with being him, we can all carry on with our vanilla writings, knowing that someone else is doing the stuff about amputations and skin burning.
Write about what you know and know who you are, they came together on Monday. Thanks to this blog, I have actually started to acknowledge who I really am, if you think about it, I post most days about the art I love, the music I like and my take on my own life. I write knowing that at least two people that know me will read it, so I have to be honest and clear, I can’t fool them. To not lie everyday is really an interesting experiment; I am a liar, I have always been. My family is the Big Fish* kind of family: if the story is kind of boring, well, add a little extra to make it fit into the reality you want. Sure enough the family tree is filled with amazing adventures and incredible oddities (read One Hundred Years of Solitude, by García Márquez, to get an idea).
And maybe that was what I was doing wrong, I wanted to make my stories sound better; I was lying, and of course they never were good enough, because if you are going to lie on a piece of paper you have to go all the way and compete with astoundingly dishonest people. Then my lies were never big enough, they were like throwing a firecracker into Hiroshima (or Nagasaki), because I was raised to tell believable lies, that is the whole point in adding things to an anecdote, nothing about dead people walking or surviving the attack of a serial killer, just your ordinary “...and then, you are not going to believed what happened, bla bla” stuff.
However on Monday, I wrote a simple 50 word note on envying talented people, just that, my true envy of them and the fear of being a nobody. Then came 40 words on knowing that I had made a mistake long ago (I had not thought enough before accepting a proposal) followed by 70 words on missing grandpa and 130 on the strange feeling of taking care of grandma; that was it, 120 here, 60 there, 150, all about real moments, all about things I knew. I love it. To be honest and finally write down what I think about eloping, bulimia and dreams; face the fact that I am probably a little jaded and mostly confused.
It has been incredible, and yes, as I told you in the first line of this post, it has also been hard, because part of accepting who I am is accepting who I never was and who I will never be, and sometimes that type of honesty can break your heart, but writing is worth it; I have also come to learn in my years alive, that the heart heals quite rapidly and that dealing with a broken heart is easier than facing a writer’s block (the first one only needs obscene amounts of chocolate and ice cream, the second one a bizarre mixture of substances and experiences that I have yet to master).
So, anyway, thanks, because if you are reading this you are part of all of it, and if we were ever to meet, I would gladly buy you a drink (a cheap one of course because I am poor).
Now, a song!!!
Oh, OK, this is perfect, remember that I can’t ask this computer to play videos, and well that means that I can’t actually go and search the Web (the World Wide Web) for a new song, but!! I have been loving a song that I cannot post because Embedding was Disabled by Request... so instead of going in search for a new video and kill my computer in the process, I will just add a little link here --> The song is called The Comeback and it's by Shout Out Louds, listen to it and have a nice day!!!
* Directed by Tim Burton, 2003.
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