writing to write ain't right ...

for me!



They say a good writer writes, everyday. Well, I guess a good writer, I shall never be. I set this blog up to do exactly that -- write, EVERYday! Obviously, I haven't done that too well.

It's odd. In high school, my 11th grade English teacher suggested that I take Creative Writing and told me she would send the required teacher's recommendation, since I was not in an advanced English class (which was a pre-requisite). I always hated composing papers and detested the reading assignments even more.

I fought her on the suggestion, initially, but she kept working at me and convinced me to try it. Apparently, I must have done pretty well with the papers I had to write.

One of the requirements we were graded on in that class was to keep a daily journal. It didn't have to be good. We were never graded on quality or quantity, just that we wrote  ... SOMEthing.

If I recall, she checked our journals every two weeks. Every thirteenth day, guess what I was doing? Yup, writing journals (usually 14 of them).   ; )    

She would let you know the ones she liked by inserting comments and would correct errors as well but the grade was solely based on having 14 compositons of some sort. It helped refine my writing, but still it was something I never really got into. Sadly, I guess I was too busy partying to be bothered.

I was way out of my league as the other students in the class were writing stuff far better than anything I could summon. I made a request to the teacher to allow me to opt out of the class. She was pretty understanding and did make arrangements for me to do just that.

For years, I didn't write. When I re-enrolled in college, of course, that changed, but as for writing to write, not so much. My first semester I took a writer's composition class and the instructor told us to do what is called "free writing".

Free writing is just writing whatever comes to mind. It doesn't need to have sentence structure, or grammar, or substance, or even make sense, just write. Write whatever comes to mind.

This concept was so  foreign to me. I struggled to write anything.

After the assigned 15 minutes, I think I had two or three sentences. I couldn't bring myself to just write "jibberish". Others in the class had a page either front or both front and back.

This is the basic problem I have. I don't bother to speak unless I feel I have something good to contribute. I struggle to write because I feel I have nothing to say. Much like this whole damn blog.   LOL